So you’ve booked your award ticket using British Airways Avios and you can’t seem to get rid of the British Airways frequent flyer number. Consequently, you want to change it to an American Airlines or a oneworld alliance frequent flyer number where you have elite status so that you could choose better seats.
Once upon a time you were able to change your frequent flyer number using the Finnair website trick, but that is no longer the case since British Airways hardcodes the BA frequent flyer number. Now, there is an alternative method using the Royal Jordanian website. Here’s how to change your frequent flyer number on a British Airways Avios award ticket:
Step 1. “Copy (CTRL+C)” the British Airways booking reference found on the Avios Award ticket confirmation screen.
Step 2. Go to www.rj.com and paste the booking reference reservation number under “Manage My Booking” and enter your last name.
Step 3. Click on Update My Contact.
Step 4. Under frequent flyer information, choose your airline that you have elite status and enter the associated frequent flier number.
Step 5. Once you’ve hit update, you’ll see the progress bar.
Step 6. You’ll be brought back to the booking screen. Click on “View traveller details” to see if it was successful.
Step 7. Under “Traveler information”, you should see the new updated frequent flier credentials that you have inputted. Success!
Note: This method only works for oneworld carriers such as Air Berlin, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas Airways, Royal Jordanian, and Siberia Airlines.
Does this always work to get the confirmation number of the airline that you’re actually FLYING on? For example, I used Avios to book a US Airways flight. When I booked on ba.com, I got a British Airways confirmation number, but that doesn’t do me any good to check in or get a boarding pass from US Airways – I had to call in to BA to get that.
But if I could do it online via Royal Jordanian, that would be awesome indeed!
yes, you can get the US Airways record locator from rj.com. You can also get it from checkmytrip.com if you plug in your BA reference number.
Excellent post! It made the next edition of TBB (the non angry one!).
Thanks George! I don’t think you’ve ever been angry with me.
it made my angry list because I could have used this trick many times in the past. Oh well, live, learn, and read Points Summary. 🙂
I had a Starwood personal account and they would only offer 1000 Starpoints as a bonus, so I decided to cancel the card. Guess I should have gotten the business card!
This was posted by Gary a couple of months ago.
http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2014/08/04/frequent-flyers-will-want-use-royal-jordanian-website-one-simple-trick/
Nice post- love that you’re a fav of TBB 😉
I receive the error message ‘Please provide us with a birthdate. (1429)’ when I try to update the FL information.
There is an adult and twochildren on the booking. Any idea what to do?
I’m getting the birthdate message too – what gives? Did they shut this down?
Hi, finally used Finnair site
I tried this trick with a booked (and bought) ticket with BA. I have a BA FF number and mistakenly forgot to put in my AA number (I’m platinum on AA). The royal Jordanian website goes to a secondary TSA information page which wanted my passport and other pre-flight information. So I tried the Qatar website and was able to change it no problem.
Thanks for the trick – I’m all set now.