Help us out: your experiences of using two frequent flyer numbers with the same booking

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• Paul says:

  14 Mar14 March 08:14

  I came here to remark “well, this is probably the most niche HFP article ever” and find instead every day’s a school day. 🙂

• Emilie says:

  14 Mar14 March 08:25

  We booked a BA holiday to the US leaving next week. I joined RJ Silver Jay and phoned up BA yesterday to enter my FF number so it is ready for me to make seat selection today. The BA rep didn’t seem to know too much about the intricacies involved but said that I should keep the RJ status there until my holiday was completed and then change it back to my BA EC number within 48 hours of completing the trip in order to earn the Avios points on my BA card.
  Having read one of the comments above it looks as though I need to have my BA EC number on each leg of the journey to earn the points. I read somewhere else that changing out of the RJ status could potentially lose my seat selections. I certainly do not want to revert to BA EC after the first leg of the journey to then lose the seat selection for the return journey which is a few days later. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for raising this very timely topic Rob.

  • Mark says:

    14 Mar14 March 08:55

    You don’t need status to retain a seat selection, only to select the seats in the first place. I’ve had status with another One World airline before and switched the FF number to my BA account before travelling (having used the status for seat selection, travelling in CW so had the other benefits anyway) without issue. I do recall having a problem last time in switching it back to the other airline (bronze equivalent status) to select seats at T-7 for the return flight after the outbound had been flown. That was 3 years ago though, and I can’t remember which site I was using at the time to change the status.

    • cc-not-bcc says:

      14 Mar14 March 09:17

      I once booked seats at Qatar (for free) while I was BA silver… then a couple of months later, when I lost status and moved bronze, Qatar removed my seat selection.

      • jjoohhnn says:

        14 Mar14 March 09:30

        Was there another change that happened at the time? Like type of aircraft change?

    • JDB says:

      14 Mar14 March 10:34

      You do need the relevant status to stay in your booking until the check-in day in case your seating is changed following an aircraft swap or human/automated rejigging of the seating plan.

• Richie says:

  14 Mar14 March 08:28

  Does a printed boarding card of any airline show both FQTV and FQTS FF numbers when they are different?

  • Rob says:

    14 Mar14 March 08:35

    No

  • Dubious says:

    15 Mar15 March 01:11

    SQ boarding pass (printed card pass) will show an indication of both, e.g.
    ‘LH *G KFLY’ but it does not show the numbers.

• John says:

  14 Mar14 March 09:02

  I am glad that I currently have no status and am not chasing any status as all this faff would reduce my enjoyment of travel.

  When I was BA Gold I did have to do this a few times –
  1) on QF flights it was pointless crediting them to BA as they earn far less than in QFF. Was able to add BA number to select seats and then change it back to QFF before checking in – showing the physical BA Gold card worked for everything else
  2) had Asia miles so CX number was in the booking – don’t recall any issues with seat selection and showing physical BA card was sufficient for everything else

• BBbetter says:

  14 Mar14 March 09:03

  RAM must be wondering why the heavy traffic to their website doesn’t translate to sales.
  Surely it’s a matter of time before this loophole is plugged?

  • Rob says:

    14 Mar14 March 09:27

    Unless it is being charged each time someone accesses Amadeus (which is possible) it may be happy with the attention.

• Duck Ling says:

  14 Mar14 March 09:25

  BA Gold Card holder flying LHR-GLA-LHR. Wanting to credit to RJ.

  LHR-GLA – checked in via the BA app (HBO) used BA Gold BP to go through First Wing to F lounge, approached customer service desk in lounge, asked to switch to RJ frequent flyer. No issue, switched FF number, printed new paper BP with RJ FF number on it, used BA digital BP to board. **NOTE** this flight two weeks ago has not credited to RJ yet and I have completed a retro claim.

  GLA-LHR – Checked in via APP (HBO), approached handling agent staff at check in desk to change account credited to to RJ. Done, new BP printed. Used BA digital BP to board. Flight credited to RJ within a few days.

• Gary Stewart says:

  14 Mar14 March 09:26

  I’ve done this at least 8 times now this year since I had the gold with RJ. I put in my FJ number, which gets me priority, free seat selection on BA flights and while I’m in the lounges, I ask them to change my RJ gold number to now show my BA number on my booking which they have done each time, without any issues at all. Although they give me a new printed boarding card at the time, I stick to my boarding pass on my mobile, which has always worked and I’ve had no issue at all. The lounges which have changed my loyalty number are GLA, EDI & LHR.

• tootsci says:

  14 Mar14 March 09:28

  I have RJ GS via hotel status match back in August, and was initially going to make a push for BA Silver until The Change. So had swapped FFN via RAM to RJ just to book my seat and then switched back again to my BA FFN for the Avios/TP. No problem getting into the BA lounge at LGW by showing my RJ pass in my Apple wallet. However, the member of staff at fast track beforehand was very firm that they’d let me through without the RJ number on my boarding pass this time but it would need to be there in the future, just showing my card wasn’t sufficient.

  Since The Change I have decided not to bother with BA, but to try to keep my RJ status so no need for the FFN to-ing and fro-ing

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