Why do I have two airline record locators?

[rsquare]

For an upcoming trip, I booked air through Cunard and duly received a record locator from the airline which allowed me to do seat selection.  A recent email from Cunard nudged me to fill out some missing information in my Cunard booking.  I idly clicked on the Air tab, just to confirm that Cunard had the correct flight.  They did, but with a different record locator.  I went to the airline site's My Trips section, entered the Cunard record locator, and was taken to my original booking with the original record locator.

 

So for one flight, I seem to have two different record locators.  Somehow, this makes me a bit nervous, even though they both seem to be attached to the same flight, and nothing (eg, seat selection) has changed.

 

Does anyone have any idea how this happened, and whether it is something about which I should be concerned?

[Pushpit]

The usual reason for two locators is if the flight is something like EWR-BOS-LHR, with the first service on say AA, and BOS-LHR on say BA. Most American airlines use Sabre as their ticketing backbone (or a Sabre derivative), the rest of the world (including Canada) uses Amadeus, and so you get both types of locators and they reference each other. The interface dates back to the 1960s and it's all a bit shonky, but mostly it works. This may explain why both locators seem to work, they know about each other and you can work with either and the airline's Manage My Booking just flips you over to the source locator. Iberia can flip between 3 locators since they have a different system (and a 4th systen on Iberia Express, and a 5th coming with Air Europa).

 

It can also be that you were issued an original locator, and then either the ticket wasn't issued or it was transferred to another locator for operations (rare but it can be done).

 

A third reason is that locators can "only" have 16 sectors in them(4 sectors on 4 tickets, maximum of 4 tickets per locator), so if you have a lot of travel it will end up spilling over into a second but linked locator. This would be a conjunction ticket.

 

So it may not be a cause for concern, but a lot will depend on the details.

Edited July 9 by Pushpit

[BEAV]

As Pushpit posted, it’s completely normal. I’ve had it a number of times. Most recently a flight on United booked through the Air Canada website. 

[rsquare]

On 7/9/2024 at 2:18 PM, Pushpit said:

 

It can also be that you were issued an original locator, and then either the ticket wasn't issued or it was transferred to another locator for operations (rare but it can be done).

 

 

Thanks for your detailed response; I learned things that I didn’t know after decades of air travel.

 

I’m inclined to accept your second possibility.  The reservation was made by Choice Air before final payment, and my TA warned me that I might not be able to reserve a seat until the ticket was paid.  This just happened last week, so I’m guessing that final payment triggered a second record locator.

 

Definitely not routing; my flight is a straight shot EWR-LHR.