Continental's explanation concerning Korean award availability - -

Thank you for taking the time to submit your inquiry to the Customer Care Department. Korean Airlines designates a limited number of seats in specific classes of service for sale by each of its partner airlines. Once our allocation has been used, no more seats can be sold by us in that class of service.

When you called Continental for reservations, our seat allocation for BusinessFirst had been depleted. Since Northwest had not yet depleted their allocation they were able to book reservations for you on those flights.

I regret we were not able to honor your request in this instance. We appreciate your patronage and look forward to welcoming you back aboard soon.

Sincerely,
Melanie Long
Manager, Alliance Customer Care

--------- Possibly since One Pass members have such a hard time getting business class on CO that they are forced to use partner airlines and are depleting their Korean allocation of business seats, while Northwest still has seats available. When I actually flew the flights using NW miles there were plenty of available business seats, and I even had the upper deck of the 747 from ICN to PEK all to myself with two flight attendants. What a great flight.