Sorry for the newbie-type question; flying CO for the fist time in 10+ years.

What is the difference between F and BF on a domestic (EWR-FLL) flight? Is there any reason to prefer one over the other?

"First" is Continental's domestic (within the US) premium-class product. "BusinessFirst" is the international version. All Continental's mainline aircraft are ONLY two cabin.

Thanks. Kinda like the difference between DL's domestic F and international BE. What confused me was that for EWR-FLL, the 753 flights are listed as BF and the 739 flights as F. I was curious as to whether there would be any difference in the seat comfort and the service. DL sometimes refers to plain old domestic F as "Business" if the flight is going on to Central America.

To elaborate, some 757-200 aircraft that are configured with the international BF cabin are also flown on domestic routes, such as EWR-FLL/PBI. You get regular domestic F service, but a BF seat, and sometimes they'll run the IFE loop.
The only way to tell which flights offer this configuration online is to look at the seatmaps -- 4 rows of 4 seats indicates a BF aircraft. 6 rows indicates a regular domestic cabin, although I believe CO is slowly reconfiguring all 757-200s with BF cabins. Not sure of the status. I believe that on the printed CO timetables (i.e., the PDF), the BF planes are listed as "752" and the domestic planes are "757"

Now, the wrinkle is that co.com has been listing the premium cabin on its 757-300 aircraft as "BusinessFirst". This is a website bug. ALL 757-300 aircraft are configured with domestic FC seats, either 3 or 6 rows (with all going to 6 rows -- again, not sure of status).

Yep, this is exactly what was confusing me. Thanks for the clarification!

No problem. And to respond specifically to your other question:
the answer for all intents and purposes is no.

One slight difference, if we want to get nitpicky, is that a 753 with only 3 F seats might get some intrusion from the Y mini-cabin behind F using the lav (I say might, because they should still be able to use the lav at the 2L door).
The 757-200s, 739s and some 738s all have mid-cabin lavs between Y and F as well, so generally no need for Y pax to cross the border.

(And of course some might quibble about the diameter of the fuselage and the curvature of the walls on the 757-series vs. the 737-series, but I digress...)

I have flown EWR-FLL (and FLL-EWR) on "Internationally" configured aircraft that are marked BusinessFirst, and you get the *true* BusinessFirst seat -- 55 inch of pitch, almost fully reclining, etc. I would double check seatguru.com and try to get onto one of those planes if you can. Some 753s may show up as BF in Co.Com and may not be, but if it's a 752 and it says BF you may be in for a treat.

be aware, CO has many IT glitches relating to AC and class of service. if you're getting a 753 flight listed as BF, you're more than likely getting a flgith that should say "first class." CO's 753's do not have BusinessFirst seats, regardless of what the fare class says.

you can never 100% reley on what co.com says as "class."

your only way to tell for sure is to check the seat map and AC type.

any 737 will have normal dometic FC. any 767 or 777 will have have BF seats. any 753's will have normal domestic FC (sometimes 12 seats and sometimes 24 seats). 752's will have either normal domestic FC seats (24 seats) or BF seats (16 seats).

it all just depends. the last thing to look at is what co.com lists as "class," ie first, intl biz, BizFirst or econ.

I would think a search could have been a great subtitiute for this thread...

-Vincent

It's tough to search for short strings such as "BF" and "F". I searched on "BusinessFirst" and got thousands of threads not germane to my specific question.

On the 753 with 3 rows of F, they have the mesh curtain behind row 3, sending a very clear message to the pax in the minicabin to use the 2L lav.

(As an aside, I've never been on the 735, but I hated the 3-row F cabin because I felt like I was penned in -- nowhere to walk, esp. when the FA was doing setup/cleanup from meal.)

You need to ease up on that line of advice.

Searching for "BusinessFirst First" yielded this thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=537419 which actually covers this topic...

-Vincent