If you’ve ever booked a British Airways Avios award for a flight on American Airlines, you’ve noticed that you could not use the British Airways confirmation code (or PNR for “passenger name record”) on the American Airlines website. You usually had to go to a different website, like CheckMyTrip.com, to find the relevant American Airlines PNR.
Today, I entered a British Airways Avios PNR into AA.com and it actually loaded the correct itinerary. Not only that, but it still showed the proper American Airlines PNR on the reservation page. It seems that this may be a consequence of last weekend’s computer switchover with US Airways. I double-checked this for an Avios itinerary I booked before October 17th as well.
Once I was in my itinerary on AA.com, I was quickly able to enter my AAdvantage number and select a Main Cabin Extra seat thanks to my American Airlines status.
How to easily put your AAdvantage Frequent Flyer number into an Avios booking
I love using Avios because it’s only 4,500 points for a one-way economy class ticket for a flight within 650 miles. Now that I’m located toward the Northeast, I can use that for flights to Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and more. I also like using Avios because American is my preferred airline and I can still get my elite status benefits (like priority boarding and better seat selection) on a partner award ticket.
In the past, there have been times where I wouldn’t be able to change the frequent flyer number to my AAdvantage number (so I could get better seats), so I had to call or tweet American Airlines. What I’ve noticed is that I am able to change the number online on the AA.com site if I delete the British Airways Executive Club number when booking the Avios ticket.
When booking an Avios ticket on the British Airways website, you’ll see this on the payment page – leave the Executive Club Membership Number blank.:
As Miles points out in the comments, you unfortunately cannot do this when you have an account as part of a family account.
All in all, this ability to use Avios PNRs on the AA.com is a small change, but I thought it was a helpful change worth noting!
