I would like to share with you on how impressed I was on Continental’s Star Award redemption last minute booking to attend my mother’s funeral. First, I tried to redeem on United where I have more miles to use but UA’s agents could not see available seats in O or I buckets on any star alliance partners. This was not the case for Continental. With CO, for the outbound, I was able to get a seat on US from MIA-JFK and SQ from JFK-SIN-MNL all in first. For the inbound, I was booked on TG from MNL-BKK and BKK-LHR in I and O respectively, and on LH from LHR-DUS-MIA in X and O.

Things learned (including reviews of other Star Alliance members flown):

1. Although most of CO’s agents were very helpful in making changes, make sure that the agent reviews the new itinerary before the ticket/s is/are re-issued. In two occasions, a segment was drop for the SIN-MNL for the outbound and then the original BKK-SIN segment for the inbound. The dropped SIN-MNL was added at the last minute and thanks to the accommodating SQ check-in agent in JFK who patiently waited for CO to finish making the changes just to let me check-in even if SQ's check-in time was already closed. For the inbound, I was supposed to be on SQ from SIN-FRA but because of the dropped segment after reissuing the ticket by CO, CO had to rebook me on TG and LH for the BKK-LHR-DUS-MIA flights. I missed the excellent service of SQ for the SIN-FRA but this was compensated by the very nice free spa I had 2 hours before my flight to LHR, courtesy of TG for flying first.

2. Even if tickets were issued by CO on another star alliance carrier like TG, it takes more about 24-hours for the re-issued CO ticket to appear in TG's system. The last minute rebooking of CO for my BKK-LHR had to be manually searched by a TG ticket agent in BKK before they could enter it manually in their reservation system and to allow me to check-in. This is what I was told by the TG agent who helped me fly out that night to catch my DUS-MIA flight.

3. Unlike UA, CO sees all existing award inventories that are shown in the ANA award reservation system. In fact, the O seat for the JFK-SIN that I was booked on did not even showed up in the ANA award system but CO was able to snag 1 seat for my outbound.

4. For the 3 long haul first class experienced I had for this trip on SQ, TG and LH, SQ has the best in-flight service including food and beverages. At the same time, TG's free pre-flight spa and very personal attentiveness by its ground staff (check-in and lounge) impressed me of their service before the flight. LH compared with TG provides better in-flight personal service. Also, I like the long sleeve shirt of LH better than the pajamas.The only downside of LH is that the Senator Lounge is after the passport control when you are arriving from a connecting flight.

5. US Airways allows only up to 3 segments for check-in baggage. Since I was flying MIA-CLT-JFK-SIN-MNL, the US check-in agent had to use manual tags and taped them together then manually entered them into their check-in system to have my 2 baggage check-in all the way to MNL. The agent acknowledged this to be a limitation for the part of US Air.

Before the entrance of CO into the Star Alliance network, I was thinking of dropping them because of my UA membership. However, this redemption experience I had with CO and UA made me decide to stick with CO and will definitely do less flying on UA. Although some CO agents made some errors that almost caused me to miss my JFK-SIN flight and the re-booking out of my preferred SQ flight to another star alliance flight, I consider these to be CO agents' learning curve while they are integrating themselves into the Star Alliance Network. In fact, they had outperformed UA agents in booking my award tickets.

Thanks Continental.