Does anyone know what fare booking class is used to travel on an award in First Class or Business Class on Singapore, Thai, United and Air Canada?
If your question is restricted to United, then the answer is as follows:
First (Free) = XF/"R"
First (UG) = NF/"X"
Business (Free) = XC/"O"
Business (UG) = NC/"I"
Note that there are actually two booking classes for each award category.
That's because United's internal systems allow some special two character booking classes (XF/NF/XC/NC) which don't work in most other booking engines including large GDSs, e.g. Abacus, Amadeus, Apollo, Sabre and Worldspan and/or major web sites, e.g. Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity.
In either case, it's almost impossible to look at inventory levels for these booking classes.