hiya -

C class tickets should always be less than J (although I guess its possible through a consolidator that J could be less). Regardless, you can sometimes buy C or J directly from the US website, and in those cases C always costs less.

I dont know the history/rationale behind the 2 classes, but C is basically a discounted business class ticket.

I think that C still receives the class-of-service bonus, although have never been able to fly C or J myself. Note though that many of the bonuses posted on the Official Bonus Code Thread work for C or J.

As for your other point (searching for C tix), theres no 'automated' way but if you choose 'flexible dates' on a route, let the fares come up, then go to the bottom and choose 'View All/More Fares' then it will list ALL available fares from the website. If C is available on the route, it will show up there.

HOWEVER, sometimes C tickets are not available directly from the website - but are still being sold on the route. An easy example of this are the tickets sold by flights.com. I have seen C-class tickets there (prior to 9/11 and its subsequent Envoy sales) when none were available from the airline itself.

Seems though like several of the transatlantic routes currently have C available on the web.