channa

The fare I'm seeing is a UA flight to IAD and JJ coded UA flights IAD-GRU-GIG and v.v.. It's actually a JJ fare all the way through.

CO's systems won't let them sell codeshares for their own metal. The flights you want are JJ-coded UA flights, so I don't think you will be able to get them. Plus I doubt they would fare it as codeshare anyway (you need it to fare as JJ).

The fare is available at other agencies, so if you don't like Hotwire, you can book it elsewhere. But I don't think booking direct thru UA is an option.

I ran into something like this a year ago when CO/UA were still marketed separately. I had a CO voucher that I wanted to use, so CO had to book it, but UA had a lower fare than CO, even though the flights were CO metal (they were still filing fares separately at the time).

There was no way to get CO to book the UA-coded CO flights, but I got UA to book them with Apollo, then got CO to take it over and fare it, so it worked.

Since we're on CO's systems now, CO's system limitations would likely apply.