Scheduled flights booked through a tour operator

Not sure if anyone can help with this. We go to Lindos in Rhodes every May and always book through Kosmar. This year in Jan they wrote to everyone who had already booked offering the option of a BA scheduled day flight for an extra £20 pp instead of the Excel charter night flight. We jumped at that & opted for BA. In fact the net extra cost is only £10 as on charter we had paid a £10 supp for "seats together"!

I've been trying to obtain from Kosmar our scheduled flight PNR (ie. BA six character booking ref) so we can access our booking on ba.com, enter Exec Club details, request seats...etc. But Kosmar say they don't use PNR's as they have a block allocation and pass the names to BA 72 hrs before. I would have thought that being a scheduled service a booking is a booking and must have a PNR? Any thoughts?

No, I am a travel agent, and I have had this problem with Virgin - booked through Funways. Anyways you cannot prebook seats on BA short haul - although I dont know if this includes card holders. If you are booked as a 'group' it will be under theier allocation of seat which do not have booking ref.

You may well find that the booking class of the ticket you have, as it has been block booked by an agent, does not allow miles to be earned.

As a frequent BA flyer, on shorthaul services you are only able to request seats when travelling in their Club Europe cabin and is not available in their Euro Traveller (economy) cabin on any route at anytime regardless of your exec club tier. However, your requests for window/aisle seats when you register for the exec club are apparently taken notice of. All BA flights are mile-earing unless it is a redemption flight booked with BA miles. BA don't really seem to like travel agents, as when I booked with a travel agent, they charged a much higher fare and some of their MMB features were disabled. Managed to get PNR codes fine though.

I will stand to be corrected though,

Thanks, T

Thanks for the various replies. Don't quite agree though with not being able to use the "request a seat" option in economy? On recent flights to Glasgow, Rome, Palma & Berlin all in economy we've been able to access our booking months in advance and use the request a seat option. Got a flight to Glasgow booked in March, cheapest available on ba.com, costing £88. I can retrieve my booking, bring up the seat map and select seat

BA no longer allow most Tour Operators to book their own PNR for Inclusive Tour (or 'IT') Fares. Instead the Tour Operator must book through 'Line Management' which is essentially a BA Reservations department (although it might be outsourced) which holds allocations on each flight.

Your tour operator will be holding your seats as part of these allocations, and the names will be entered into the bookings 72hours before departure by the system, when tickets are produced.

This is fairly normal practice for IT tickets.
By making the Tour Operator book direct and not on their own systems BA saves alot of money on Distribution.

Originally posted by Vegascrazy
Thanks for the various replies. Don't quite agree though with not being able to use the "request a seat" option in economy? On recent flights to Glasgow, Rome, Palma & Berlin all in economy we've been able to access our booking months in advance and use the request a seat option. Got a flight to Glasgow booked in March, cheapest available on ba.com, costing £88. I can retrieve my booking, bring up the seat map and select seat

Hi

If you have a full price ticket or if you are BA Gold or Silver then you can pre select seats when booking.

Managed to get hold of our PNR through a contact in BA, trouble is it's a single PNR for Kosmar's block booking of 40 people! When I tried using it on ba.com Manage My Booking it displays this message >>

This booking contains a large party and can not currently be displayed. Please contact your local British Airways office or Travel Agent.

Maybe it'll work a a day or two before the flight, would be good to benefit from on-line check-in.