American Airlines, any benefits with BAEC?

[wookie192]

Hello,

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, wasn’t sure if to put it in the BA or the “Others” one.

I have an open-jaw booking to the USA in September, our plan is to fly across states and visit different parts of the US. I’m just in the middle of booking one of the trips with American Airlines and I thought…. Does my BAEC status get me any benefits with American, and if so is the a specific way to book those flights to ensure I get the benefit?

I know on AAs website it says “when flying on British airways, you can earn and redeem AAdvantage miles, plus, enjoy all the benefits of your AAdvantage status”. So does this also apply the other way around?

I’d love to be able to benefit from free seat selection, extra baggage allowance, priority boarding, lounge access etc….

Any tips and advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[yonasl]

If you are BAEC silver or above you will benefit from lounge access, extra luggage (even if you book without), priority boarding and free seat selection.

[wookie192]

Just trying to book now and entering mine and my partner’s BAEC numbers. The annoying thing is it’s accepting mine fine, but for my partner it saying “Name and account number don’t match”.

I’ve logged into BAEC and all the details are correct for her and match what I entered, so not sure why AA wont let me continue to book.

[wookie192]

All sorted 🙂

I rang AA and they told me to remove the second passengers loyalty number as she’ll benefit from my status anyway. Continue with the booking and once booked to ring them back up and they’ll re-add her BAEC number to her ticket.

So I did that and they did as they said, also got them to confirm my benefits, happy to say I got more than I thought to be honest, 2 checked bags each free of charge (i thought we’d maybe only get 1 each, so 2 is a bonus since we may take 3 bags in total), lounge access, priority check-in/boarding, pick my seats and a few other things. The good thing about picking the seats which I’ve already done is I was able to pick extra leg room seats that also come with free drinks.

Certainly going to make sure we fly with AA for all the other planned trips across the US.

[stevenhp1987]

We usually try and fly AA from LHR to the US, then BA back.

Flying AA means we get to use the lounges in T3 which are far superior to the lounges in T5.

If you are BA Silver/Gold you can choose Main Cabin Extra seats on AA which are extra legroom seats. If you have a domestic connection these can be good if you want an extra drink or two on route as they include alcohol.

I also find AA business to be better than BA…

Flying BA back means we get to keep our UK261 protection.

If it was a Hand Baggage Only fare for a short weekend trip I’d probably book AA both ways to make use of the free luggage for Silver/Gold.

[NorthernLass]

I love using avios on AA, however dynamic pricing is going to make things tricky going forward. I’ve seen the same flight prices at 10k avios and 44k!

If you have status you also have a better chance of being upgraded – we got moved to domestic F flying to Key West last winter. It was American Eagle and an absolute shed of a plane, and people in pyjamas and another one with a cat strapped to her chest but we had plenty of leg room and breakfast 😂

[drdan]

Please don’t think for a moment the AA lounges are any good…they are not. Think coke dispensers, pretzels and the like with free bud light..anything better is pay for.

The Flagships are better.

Don’t spend any extra time in them.

[wookie192]

Cat strapped to her chest??? 🤨😂 Do you think they’ll let me fly with a sheep strapped to my chest?

I didn’t pay using Avios for my AA flights are the flights where quite cheap, especially when I don’t need to pay for hold baggage too. Just bought each flight “Basic Economy” (cheapest fare). Most the flights are no more than 2hrs with the longest one being 4hrs.

[NorthernLass]

There might be a weight limit for animals, but apparently it’s quite common in the US of A!
Indeed, google “cat carrier airline” or similar.

[BillB]

I found this thread after getting a loyalty program error message while booking AA domestic cash fares in the USA on the AA website. When completing the passenger information I selected British Airways in the Loyalty program dropdown for each passenger and entered the BAEC numbers. When I clicked to go to the next step I got the message “Name and account number don’t match” on both passengers.

I was able to fix this by completing the booking with no loyalty selection, putting the reservation on Hold, then viewing the booking and entering BAEC numbers in the Passengers section.