Managing your American Airlines flight from a Qantas booking PNR

After doing a bit of searching on the internet, I gave up, and posted on a forum…

I’ve just booked a flight on QF’s website that includes one sector on a non codeshare AA flight (LHR to LAX).

Is there a simple way to find out my AA PNR, so I can go and choose a seat? It’s a 12 hour flight, so I’d quite like to ensure I don’t have a middle seat, that would be no good.

I’ve tried looking up the QF PNR on Finnair, which I thought did something clever like that last time, but no luck. I don’t see it in my electronic ticket. Do I have to ring QF customer service and bother them, or is there a simpler way?

Naturally, I then found the answer almost immediately afterwards. But for reference (hello Google), the answer is rather counter-intuitively…

• Visit the British Airways website and use “Manage my booking”. Use your Qantas PNR and surname.
• Choose your AA flight
• Click “Choose Seat”
• Your flights will appear, with your QF seats already visible. Your AA flight will have a “Choose seats” link.
• That page will show you both the “BA booking reference”, which is actually your Qantas one, and the “American booking reference”.
• Visit American’s website, and use this American booking reference to get in.

There, that was easy enough once you know how.

Obviously, Qantas ought to publish, somewhere, the AA PNR as well as the QF one… but still, there we are.