I just used miles for a Business/First award from IAH - MCO - LGW. The MCO - LGW leg is on a Virgin Atlantic codeshare (CO 8248) and it's booked in G class. When choosing the flight it showed the class as "Upper Class (G)" but then when choosing seats it showed the economy cabin.

Here's a screenshot of the relevant part of the confirmation:

http://209.61.243.241/CO-VS-G-Class.jpg

Now I'm trying to figure out if I got Upper Class or Economy and I'm confused based on the following posts:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...96&postcount=4
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=37
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...45&postcount=9

What did I get? If this is a bug, Continental really ought to fix it before causing more cases of blue balls!

FWIW, I recently took a trip in VS UC I booked using OP miles and it booked into E class...

You got CO G, which translates into VS T (Economy reward), and not VS G (Business/Upper Class reward), as the website indicates.

Which website? See the screenshot from Continental at http://209.61.243.241/CO-VS-G-Class.jpg. They said it was Upper Class!

Yes, that's what I meant -- the Continental.com website is wrong.

Been there. Done that. CO's itinerary listings display G as upper class. CO is wrong. You will get an economy seat when you board VS.

Yes - this has been a longstanding, minor co.com bug.

Hi jimbob, very sorry for the confusion. As others have mentioned, we were incorrectly listing G class as "Upper Class" on our codeshare flights operated by Virgin Atlantic. To be clear, G class is considered Upper Class only when the flight is marketed and operated by Virgin Atlantic (non-codeshare). On Continental codeshare flights operated by Virgin Atlantic, G class is used for Economy Class.

We have corrected this on continental.com, and your flight from Orlando to London should now show as Economy Class. If you redeemed the Business Class reward for this portion of the itinerary, you are entitled to a refund for the difference in miles between Business and Economy. If you'd rather take a different routing, we'll be glad to see what if any options are available. If you would like help with either, please send me a PM with your confirmation number and we'll take it from there.

Thanks for the quick response and fix. It's now showing up properly:

http://209.61.243.241/CO-VS-G-Class-2.jpg

As soon as I saw the seat selector come up, I knew something was wrong so I immediately booked a backup trip for the same dates. Unfortunately I had to switch cities (to AMS) but we'll deal with it. It would have been a real disappointment if we showed up for the flight expecting Upper Class (my first long haul flight outside of coach and her first flight outside of coach ever) and ended up in the back. I cancelled the VS itinerary. The miles and dollars haven't been refunded yet but based on what I read, there should be no fees for canceling since I'm Platinum.

Where do you want to go? London?

I'd be surprised if they couldn't get you on a KL flight AMS-LHR or AMS-LCY. There are several flights.

We're actually trying to get to Paris but since we couldn't find anything, it looked like London and then the Chunnel would work. I've tried booking to Paris through other cities but co.com complains about open jaw rules.

We are currently booked on a standard BF reward from IAH-(CO)-DTW-(NW)-AMS on 12/16. There are lots of standard first class options from AMS-(AF)-CDG on the morning of 12/17 when we arrive. I don't think there's anyway to book that online and I've avoided calling so far because I like to see all the options and take my time choosing.

co.com only shows a very small portion of available partner flights using miles. Not calling means you're missing out on many many more itineraries that may suit you much better.

Thanks for the advice rkkwan. If they could just offer Remote Desktop and let me see what the agent is looking at that would be perfect. :-) I'd like to see what planes, layovers, etc. all in front of me.

I just had another uh-oh moment when I saw another problem with the flight that I actually did book on co.com. Apparently flight NW 54 not only takes almost twice as long as it really should but it also travels back in time a day.

http://209.61.243.241/NW54.jpg

At this point If I was traveling alone I'd just rather fly in coach rather then trying to figure this all out. This is no fun. I've been playing with the reward booking for several hours and I've got a ton of feedback on problems with the reward booking such as:

- Blue/green/yellow/white colors regularly being inaccurate. It wasn't unusual to find standard first class awards when the day is shown as white which means you better check every day and not rely on the colors.

- Choosing and paying for a flight in first class only to later find after choosing a return flight that you fly the domestic leg in first but then over the ocean in coach.

- This isn't necessarily a bug but why even show EasyPass awards when standard awards are available? How about the case that I saw several times where I could choose a standard BF leg for 22.5k or an EasyPass coach leg for 25k? Pay more for less. Huh?

This is a common complaint, and it'd be nice if there were a different color or some other indication that some of the flights weren't in the selected class of service, but the flip side is that in some cases the TATL is available in the premium cabin and the domestic is not. In those cases you'd want to see the mixed option.

As for getting to CDG from IAH, you shold also be able to see the AF non-stops, I think, online. Certainly you can call and ask about them. From NYC there is a ton of availablity on AF these days. You might even be able to do IAH-JFK-CDG with the TATL on AF. Of course, getting a seat up front on the 735 from IAH-JFK may prove to be difficult, but like you said, the TATL is the important flight. Also look at other AF gateways, such as ATL or ORD. Tons of options with only one stop to CDG, but most of them aren't online.

Yeah, co.com has historically had problems displaying arrival dates for redeyes.

You have to ignore that and sort of know when the flight arrives.