Originally Posted by
mduell
How are you determining if it's booking BE?
Does it change if you select a carryon bag on flights.google?
If nothing else, call UA and ask an agent to book the class you want.
Short update. I called the premier desk, a moderately competent representative tried to book the LH flight instead of the UA codeshare, but his reservation system wouldn't let him, it kept changing it back to the UA flight. He said "let me try this other tool maybe it's different", but alas, it was the same, the codeshare flight is 2x the cost, and he was unable to book me on the LH flight number.
One interesting note, he said it's possible (and he has done it several times) to upgrade BE TATL flights to standard economy for $99 each way. UA says upgrades from BE is only possible in north America.
Looks like the only way to book this will be to click-through and purchase through google flights and then call and upgrade. Sigh.