Booked my wife ticket from Seattle to Rome on US Airways (paid ticket, economy) and got myself award ticket on CO. Unfortunately, US was the only *A flight that had reasonable price and only CO had award seats, so we ended up on different flights.

She just flew SEA-PHL-FCO and hated every minute of it. In her words: "dirty planes, no IFE on 5hr domestic flight, no water runs on 9hr transatlantic flight, surely FAs and inedible food on PHL-FCO (she normally finds CO/UA food in Y acceptable)". I actually thought that A330 product was not bad in Y, but she disagrees :-).

Question: can CO accept her US ticket on return flight, if we ask nicely at check-in (she is booked FCO-CLT-SEA)? Looks like FCO-EWR is earlier then FCO-CLT, so I thought we could try. We can also try in the lounge after check-in. I've heard there is some sort of agreement in *A about accepting tickets even without endoresment of the ticketing carrier (or does it only work in irrops)?

Anton