Trying to book a GSO - ATL - LAX one-way for the holidays. My preferred itinerary puts me on a GSO - ATL flight in time to catch the 777 ATL - LAX flight, ideally in "business" i.e. "I" or above. Namely, DL4872 + DL115.

I'm fine with flying in coach for the originating segment as it's only about an hour from GSO to ATL; aside from that, the "first" cabin on those flights is rather dismal, and always packed to the hilt even when the rest of the plane is half-empty.

In trying to put this itinerary together on delta.com I've had scant luck. No combination of search criteria will let me book that specific flight/class pairing. If I select "first/business" (or the corresponding "I" or above fare bucket), it only shows those flights which have a first cabin on the GSO - ATL flights, none of which will enable me to connect to the 777 ATL - LAX flight with anything less than a 5 hour layover, which is just insane.

The best I was able to do, short of phoning, was to book the entire itinerary in "B." And yet, oddly enough, if I go to expedia, select "first/business" and search by schedule rather then price, that same flight combination shows up with the pairing I want: GSO - ATL in "Y"; ATL - LAX in "I"— for less than $100 more than the "B" fare delta.com coughed up.

Is delta.com just not designed to handle all possible combinations of its flights? If I'm searching a connecting flight scenario shouldn't it show me ALL the possible combinations, even if one (or more) legs isn't in the cabin I selected as a preference. I seem to recall the old delta.com site being able to combine single-cabin and multi-cabin flights by default. For instance, even if the originating flight was a Delta Connection flight (i.e. single cabin), it would nevertheless include it in the search results even if I selected "first/business" as my preference.

It seems strange that delta.com would preclude flights in this way. Or, rather, that it's designed to predicate the entire itinerary on the originating flight.

I hesitate booking on expedia on any other third party site but this may be the route to go on this go around.