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Since American Airlines & Japan Airlines are part of the Oneworld Alliance, you might find yourself having booked a flight on JAL via American & realized you don’t have the correct record locator to make changes to your flight on the Japan Airlines website. Two reasons why you might not have this record locator is that the flight might be a codeshare where you booked a flight on AA.com that has an American Airlines flight number, but the flight will actually be on Japan Airlines metal, or you booked an award ticket for a JAL flight via American Airlines.
When booking a codeshare or award flight such as this, you will be given an American record locator. Unfortunately, this locator isn’t sufficient if you want to make certain changes to your reservation, including seat assignments. You’ll have to get your Japan Airlines record locator in order to do this.
Don’t worry, getting a JAL record locator for your reservation that was booked through American is easy, though it might take a little bit of time depending on how busy American is.
All you have to do is call American Airlines reservations at one of the phone numbers below, or your appropriate number if you are an elite member:
Within the U.S.
| Language | Phone | Hours (CT) |
|---|---|---|
| English | 800-433-7300 | 24 hours, Daily |
| Spanish | 800-633-3711 | 24 hours, Daily |
| Japanese | 800-237-0027 | 6 a.m. – 12 midnight, Daily |
| Mandarin Chinese | 800-492-8095 | 7 a.m. – 12 midnight, Daily |
| Hearing & speech impaired | 800-543-1586 | 24 hours, Daily |
Call the appropriate number, then go through the robot menus for existing reservations. You might be on hold for a bit, but eventually you will be connected with an American Airlines reservation agent. Give them the record locator from AA, and they’ll be able to give you the corresponding record locator for Japan Airlines. It usually only takes a second. You can then use that record locator on the JAL website to see your full reservation details & make any seat changes you might need to make (tip: go to web check-in on the JAL website rather than “view my reservations”, otherwise you might not be able to actually make any changes)
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