Getting Your AA/US Reservation Number From Avios Reservation

If you are like many other US-based point users, you have been excited about the possibilities that opened up with the addition of US Airways to the Oneworld Alliance. One of the main reasons for that excitement was the opening of several airports to the distance-based British Airways Avios redemptions.

A short-haul (< 650 miles) one-way booked with British Airways Avios can be had for only 4,500 Avios. That means a round-trip of the same distance will only require 9,000 points – 16,000 fewer than both American Airlines and US Airways would charge for the same ticket! To read more about this, check out this earlier post.

Getting Your AA/US Reservation Number

Now that you have booked these ultra-cheap award tickets, what do you do? You will probably want to select seats and get the confirmation number to check-in with, right? The reservation number that British Airways gives you will not work with AA or US. Also, British does not give you the reservation number for either AA or US. To get that, you have to go an extra step and visit CheckMyTrip for the number.

So, take your British Airways number and head on over to checkmytrip.com. Once there, input your British Airways number and last name to pull up the reservation. I had wanted to insert a screenshot to show where your AA or US record locator would show up but I had to delete way too much personal information that it would have made it unusable. 🙂 Look down the page and click view details under the flight information. Underneath that, you will see the information of the flight number and the type of plane scheduled. In that same information pane is the confirmation number for the appropriate airline (the airline you are actually flying). Take that number over to AA or US (whichever airline the flight is actually on) and you can pull up your reservation and make your seat choices!

In addition, you could also find your US Airways confirmation number by using your British Airways number without using any special characters (no hyphen).

Adding Frequent Flyer Number After Booking

For some, you may want to add your frequent flyer number to the reservation. In some cases, you might have forgotten to do that during the booking process or you may have it bounced out later on. If you are a AA/US elite, you definitely want your frequent flyer number tied to the reservation so you can take advantage of your elite benefits. One note – AA flights booked with Avios does actually give you Priority Access with AA for that flight – even if you do not have status with AA. That means expedited security and boarding.

To add your frequent flyer number after booking, you will actually need to involve another airline. This time, it is Finn Air. So, head over to their website and choose Manage Booking.

Enter your last name and the British Airways number. Once in, it will show you your reservation and you need to select Update Details.

After that, just edit/add whatever details you need to, including your frequent flyer information. This will update it across the Oneworld system and you are set to go!

If you want to do one-stop shopping, you can also retrieve your AA/US number through the Finn Air system as well.

I am sure that several of you already use this method to retrieve your airline locator number, but having had a few people ask me about it recently, I thought I would share it so that it might help those that do not know. Also, when you do check in, you will have opportunity to add your Known Traveler Number (KTN) for TSA PreCheck (if you have it).

Do you have other tips for retrieving your numbers or adding details?