Managing your American Airlines flight from a Qantas booking's PNR

Qantas lets you book some American Airlines flights on its website: but gives you a booking reference that won’t work on AA systems. So you get questions like this one that I posted a while ago.

“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 booking reference, 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.”

In November 2025, the answer is…

• Find the email Qantas sent you when you booked the flight, marked “Confirmation and E-Ticket Flight Itinerary for…”
• In the email will be a PDF e-ticket.
• In the top of the first page, you’ll see a ticket number. Mine starts “081-…”
• Open the American Airlines app, and look for the “find trip” screen.
• That will ask for your name, date of birth, and the “confirmation code / ticket or credit number”. Punch your ticket number in here - but don’t use the hyphen just type the numbers.
• Magically, the app will find your booking and you can now choose seats etc. It’ll also give you the AA PNR.

This is much easier than the December 2023 answer, which might still work so I’m keeping it here.

In December 2023, the answer was…

• Visit the British Airways website (no, really) and use “Manage my booking”. Use your Qantas PNR and surname.
• Choose your AA flight
• Click “Choose Seat”
• Your flights will appear. Your AA flight will have a “Choose seats” link. Click that.
• 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. (For the last step, don’t follow the link BA will give you, it’ll probably break).