Booking travel with CSR

[emiloots]

Pretty specific question - we'll be booking flights for the family with our CSR card soon.  We also have American Advantage CC through Citi - I'd love to be able to combine using points while also getting my boarding and bag privileges from AA.  Chase allows you to choose the amount of points to use and cover the remainder with a CC.  Wondering if paying the remaining amount with my AA card would still 'count' towards the AA perks.  Has anyone had experience with this?

[spooky105]

Do the perks explicitly require you to pay for the ticket using the AA card? Or could you simply "pay" the bag fees with that card at the airport?

I'm picturing that you would either have a discussion with the agent to have the fees manually waived per the card benefits or charge the fees to the card where they would then be refunded...all depends on the mechanics of the card.

[JoJo]

Not totally sure about this but when I booked a flight with Chase, you can put in a FF number.

I had some perks when I had a Delta card (free baggage) and was able to get these perks even though I had booked with the non-Delta card because the perks were tied to the FF number.

[emiloots]

Since I don't have status through my FF#, the perks are only linked to the credit card at the moment.  I guess I'll be the guinea pig let you all know.

[Catbert]

A better place to look for "advanced" travel hacking questions would be:  http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trending.php

Poke around.  If you don't finad an answer you might find the right place to ask it.

I'm guessing that plan won't work.  I know with Thank You points that if you pay part with points and part with cc that the cc must be a Thank You points card.  (Yes, I know that's Citi and not Chase.)  But the answer is likely in the fine print of both cards.

[LovesToTravel]

You should be fine.  The Citi AA free bag benefit (and I believe also boarding "benefit" <if you can call Group 5 a benefit!>) is tied to the primary cardmember's frequent flyer number.  Just make sure this is associated with your booking, and you should get the free bag benefit even if you don't use the card at all.  It's a card member benefit that is tied to your frequent flyer number (e.g. your frequent flier number is flagged as being a card holder), and is not linked to actually using the card for the booking.  The number has to be associated with the reservation at least 7 days prior to departure in order to get the benefit.  In order for your family to also get a free bag, make sure they're booked on the same reservation as the primary cardmember.