Interesting incident happened to me today which I would very much appreciate some Continental Very Frequent Flyer / knowledgeable fare rules flyer input and advice on.

Spouse and I flew last mid-week on US AIr's 40K 1st class plan ahead ff awards HOU to EWR; uneventful flight.

Return was to be today (SUN AM), and we checked in with an hour to spare and proceeded to departure gate to await boarding, but soon after US Air announced a maintenence delay. Visit to departure gate customer servivce rep confirmed we would be delayed over 4 hours due to missing a Charlotte changeover, which apparently is when USAir must invoke "RULE xxx" and go out and find us a tix on another airline, which they did on the spot and without any hesitation. Agent tells me he could book us a CON tix which would be about 45min later arriving in HOU, which was fine, and I specifically asked him if it was same class of service (1st class), which obviously I wanted to maintain. He confirmed it was.

Spouse and I had to, literally, go retrieve bags from US Air turnstiles on the bottom level, then catch airtran to another EWR terminal, then re-check and ticket w/ Continental, and proceed through the entire security process again, as if we had just arrived at the airport. Fine so far. Just worn out a bit. A little ticked now since I had envisioned going to US Air's elite lounge to wait for the flight to load and clearly that wasn't going to happen now.

When we got to the Continental ticket agent and presented the US Air/CON ticket coupon to be ticked and boarding pass issued, agent ominously told us that she could "not give us seat assignment" due to it being to close to boarding time and that we should head up to customer service immediately to get boarding passes and seat assignment. Also, ominously, she placed "stand-by" tags on our luggage when she accepted our two tags. At this point we suspected there was a foulup and, for starters, wish now she had told us there would not be FC seats available when we got up stairs. We might well have walked back to the USAir counter and forced them to re-book us on AA, on which I and spouse are both PLAT on. But - we took her advice and headed back through security to the CON service counter next to our departure gate.

The CON CSR politely confirms that, yes, we have FC tickets, but NO 1st CLASS SEATS ARE AVAILABLE and we WOULD BE STAND-BY at best. Gulp. At just over an hour before departure, I knew intuitively there would never be NO SHOWS for oversold-aready FC seats on a SUN mid-day flight.

Somehow, the departure gate had a Continental rep there a full hour early (not sure why), so line was forming, and we got in line to try to figure this out. Sure enough - US Air had correctly
"bumped" us under rule "xxx", and the tix clearly indicated first class, but Continental apparently didn't have the first class seat to sell at what now was about 1hr, 15min prior to departure, and, IMO, should not have *accepted* the involuntary bump.
Continental CSR was stumped how this happened, and first response, polite though it was, was that we should look to US Air for any compensation and basically accept a coach seat on CON. I told him we have been assured by the US Air rep as we were accepting the involuntary redirect to CON that we would get an equivalent FC seat...and that had the US Air rep ever mentioned we were not getting FC for our return leg, we would have asked him to try AA, Delta, or whomever. So, our sense was that CON's computer screwed up in accepting our invol. rebook. After about 30min of uncomfortable discussion, our rep left to go find a supervisor....and then in 10min or so the CON supervisor arrives and attempts to explain that 1) US Air rep had somehow, and he had no explanation for how it happened, direct booked the two seats on CON's computer system *but failed to call CON to get their ok* or *call ahead* as he (US Air CSR) apparently should have done either prior to, or simultaneously to booking the two fc seats on CON...as in that was the first mistake 2) he then admitted CON should not have accepted the FC booking and that though there were coach seats still available, spouse and I would would not be seated together, and would likely get two middle seats. From FC on US Air to two separate, WAAAAYYY in the back of the plane middle seats on CON in less than 45min. Trip was going downhill fast.

This supervisor told us they had grabbed two coach seats and put them on hold for us, and that they would do their best to get us our two FC seats.

Aircraft (757 I think) had 24 FC seats, and they were booked solid....3 people were late, but ultimately all 24passengers made it, so CON could not, in the end, provide us our FC seats that out tix clearly confirmed us for. Senior-level manager left us with the promise that he would contact us in next few days to offer some form of compensation.

So....am left with several questions, and solicit any advice from those who have "been there, done that".
1) were we, in fact, ABSOLUTELY entitled to SAME CLASS OF SERVICE from CON *once they accepted the booking* ? Or was CON only obligated to provide us a *coach seat* for the rule xxx involuntary transfer tix ?
2) given either answer, and CON's computer system apparently oversold, within an hour & 30 min of the flight, two FC seats (actually this supervisor told us there were at least 2 more people in the same boat as we were coming over from another airline for this one also w/ oversold FC seats), didn't this make CON liable for oversold conditions ?
3) As I see it, once CON accepted the invol redirects, US Air was "off the hook" for any liability, and as of now has no blame, other than to meet my already-low expectations for being unable to fly me on a r/t flight for the first time I've opted to use them in about 4 yrs. So, they blew the flight, but at least did the *right thing* to the best of their ability and obligation. I can't see where US Air has any liability in this involuntary DOWNGRADE due to CON's accepting our FC bookings, when they were already OVERSOLD on FC already and the flight was less than 2 hrs from departure.
4) if/when this supervisor does call me as promised, what would be fair to ask for ?

My sense is, in order a) two coach domestic r/t vouchers b) "x" dollars voucher, equivalent to the difference in fare between coash and fc, x2 (we had two seats fouled up) c) ) if not cash vouchers, which we strongly prefer, then at least enough OnePass miles that would otherwise be required for two coach seats to be upgraded for this distance (EWR-HOU)

Although CON acted as professionally as the occasion allowed, and did manage to get us two coach seats together neat the final boarding call, clearly, through no fault of our own, we went from being FC on US Air to coach seats near the tail of a 757, for the return leg of a 3hr flight, essentialy entirely due to a CONTINENTAL foulup in accepting our FC booking in the first place.

TIA for your input and advice.

[This message has been edited by ILUVCITIBANK (edited 10-13-2002).]