Hi, I've lurked here for years and finally got up the courage to post! I did use search first, so I hope that there aren't a ton of posts that cover this issue...

I'm travelling with my family on paid Continental tickets to LAX-LHR going outbound on CO and returning on the Virgin CO Codeshare Jan 6 so all my flights are CO... I thought... When I booked the flights the return was shown as CO 8243 but now the records in the system show the flight as "VS23".

Two questions:

1. I booked my parents on this flight and they have United Mileage Plus and so I loaded their MP numbers in. Will they get MP credit for VS23? They are not elite or anything so I'm just looking for straight miles, not EQM or anything.

2. My wife and I are CO Plats. What baggage allowance will we get on VS23 now that it appears NOT to be a codeshare and would it really have made any difference? We are in discount Y...

Do I have any recourse with CO if they really changed this from a codesare to another airline's flight? I recollect that they marked the itin with a schedule change notice a while back but I just looked over the times and figured out that the times were still acceptable. Now I'm thinking that they changed the flight number rather than the times. EQM's are an issue here since I'd be travelling at the beginning of the year and planned to use this flight to get a start on 2010 EQM's.