Sorry, I didn't mean to intentionally leave Qantas out of my original communication. The short answer is that the rewards we offer on both Qantas and Eva Air are indeed isolated in their own reward charts and will need to be booked directly with our International Airline Partner Desk at 800.344.3333. As many of you have predicted, our partnership with Qantas likely change or end shortly after we enter Star Alliance. These details are not yet finalized, hence no announcement.

Hi belynch, love the loaded question, and I know you've been talking this up here and with my colleagues in Customer Care. When booking a front cabin reward ticket, you should expect to travel in the cabin in which you're confirmed. If you're unable to confirm front cabin space on all legs of your itinerary, then we'll allow you to waitlist on Continental flights as a courtesy, and even stand by at the airport if you had previously waitlisted. With BusinessFirst travel rewards, we'll even refund the difference in miles if the BusinessFirst segment doesn't clear (regardless of whether your non-BusinessFirst segments did). The process is working well, and we're seeing numerous reward customers getting into the front cabin that weren't before. However, in markets where we also offer complimentary Elite upgrades, we've identified a case where our Elite upgrades are being handled ahead of previously-waitlisted customers by our Elite Upgrade Automation. Our choices are to either discontinue reward standby in these markets (like before mid-2008) or to live with this imbalance temporarily until our EUA can be expanded to account for these customers. To us, going with the latter is a no-brainer, but the solution is complicated and is waiting its place in queue to be developed. We're all for doing the right thing, but in a year where we're making an unprecedented alliance switch, it's in competition with some other non-negotiable priorities.