American Airlines has just made a minor but useful change to how it displays reservations through its website and mobile app.
You can now see partner record locators on aa.com
If you book a ticket through American Airlines (whether paying cash or redeeming miles) and it includes travel on partner airlines, you historically haven’t been able to see the partner airline record locator. Rather you’d have to call American to ask for it.
Well, that has finally changed — American Airlines’ website and mobile app now show partner airline record locators. If you have a reservation and it includes travel on a partner airline, you should see a “Reservation Code” listed underneath that partner airline flight segment, which would be the locator used by that airline.
Airlines use different record locators for the same ticket numbers, depending on what system they use. Suffice to say that being able to pull up this information online, rather than having to call, is quite useful.
American’s website now displays partner airline record locators
Why do airline record locators matter?
Why would you even need a partner airline record locator, though? Well, it can come in handy in quite a few circumstances, including:
- You typically can’t select seats on a partner airline through aa.com or the mobile app, so you typically have to go through a partner airline’s website, and that often requires having that carrier’s confirmation code
- If the first segment of an itinerary is on a partner airline, you can use that partner record locator in order to start the online check-in process
Nowadays you can redeem AAdvantage miles for a vast majority of partner airlines directly through aa.com, which didn’t used to be the case. Back when you had to book by phone I’d typically also ask the phone agent at the same time what the partner locator was. Fortunately that’s no longer needed due to this change.
This change makes it easier to select seats on partner airlines
Bottom line
American Airlines now displays partner airline record locators directly through its website and mobile app. This is a minor but awesome change that I know will save me (and especially my colleagues at PointsPros) a lot of time in the long run.
With a partner airline locator you can typically select seats and check-in online when travel on a partner airline is involved.
Are you as happy about this change as I am?
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