Originally Posted by
WannaTheater
I purchased a Basic Economy ticket a few weeks ago (from the Basic Economy column). It showed up as "V." When I spoke with an agent as to why it was not a B, she stated that B gets converted to V (or S), so that the upgrade request can be applied.
Yes, exactly, it gets converted to the underlying economy fare class (not necessarily V or S). But that doesn't have an effect on earnings; it still earns according to the originally purchased class (B). I've been on a basic economy fare that was converted to O (the underlying code) and then converted to C when I applied a SWU. But it still earned as B.