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I recently had a trip on Cathay Pacific. I entered my BA number (currently Gold) on the Cathay booking which gave me the emerald status benefits of extra luggage etc and upon check-in issued me Cathay first lounge vouchers. Once in the lounge, I then asked the staff to change the FF number to Finnair Plus, they printed new boarding passes showing the updated FF. If you can’t do it at the lounge, then you can do it at the gate – staff can do this and issue updated boarding passes, for your records.
Points posted to Finnair within a week.
Unsurprisingly, lounge staff said that they had seen many others doing the same thing!
f you can’t do it at the lounge, then you can do it at the gate – staff can do this and issue updated boarding passes, for your records.
Never occurred to me you could do this at the gate. Do you think this would work at an outstation? The vast majority of non-London lounges used by BA are not BA branded.
Staff at outstations are almost all contract staff so may not have been trained to do this or have any idea about what you are asking if they don’t handle many BA flights – which to be honest at most outstations is going to be the situation.
If you do ask at the gate then do it before boarding has actually started as their primary job is to get the flight away on time.
@theMarki I have no doubt they did and thats because CX staff are properly trained, engaged and customer focused. I did exactly as you did with the BA first wing and it simply did not work. At the outstation it failed too as the staff are clueless. This is because BA simply do not care and have no interest in serving customers and their behaviour is a clear sign of the contempt they have for customers.
Changing the number at the gate or in the lounge will simply not work in the BA system, unless the underlying BA number is removed entirely from the booking. The only way I have found to get this to work is to get the lounge team to do this. You then access your booking yourself via BA.com “manage my booking” If they have removed it then you will be able to add any desired number. If they have not, you will not be able to add one.
@JDB Please tell us what the self help is to sort this out?@LadyLondon – I tend to agree that this is deliberate. Showing my card to access the lounge is one thing but but I cant do this for fast track and free seat reservations. Really very frustrating.
@Paul – others have mentioned at least two still operative workarounds. They won’t work if the bulls in a china shop publicise them further. I’m not trying to do this myself but I know a couple of people who are and are managing fine. Others here have reported similarly. Given the airline to which you are trying to credit, I’m not sure why you aren’t doing something closer to home given that’s another route not entirely closed, as posted here by another previously. I was able to download an e-ticket there this week and all functionality operating. As an experienced traveller, this isn’t too tricky!
@Paul – interesting, and you as you say, they certainly were competent.
For clarity and info that may help others, I had a CX booking which I entered my BAC number. My trip was LHR-HKG-SYD-HGK-LHR. Once in the Cathay lounge in LHR, I asked them to change to the Finnair number which they duly did. After this, it updated all remaining flights on the booking with the Finnair number. After completing the journey to SYD and the points posted, I updated the CX booking to change it back to the BAC number. This then gave me the benefits of extra luggage again for when I checked in at Sydney.
However, as there was no CX lounge, I visited the Qantas First lounge, which was excellent. However, they were unable to make the FF change on the booking and suggested I ask at the gate.
I admit, I wasn’t sure if the staff at the gate would do it, but by the sounds of it, I got lucky with a trained staff member, and made the change without issue, they even offered to print the updated boarding passes.That’s good info about BA bookings causing problems, and fortunate I had a CX booking instead – frustrating that these systems don’t allow these changes. Is there much intel on other OneWorld systems/staff known to be capable of doing this? The RJ and RAM systems can work, though I did read on another post that it may have stopped working?
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