I am getting a little confused, if I look for BF rewards from SJO to LHR on for example.......Sept 8,

according to CO.com (standard...without logging in as elite) it shows that CO 1485 connecting with CO 32.....has availability in saverpass economy and easypass (both economy and BF)

BUT

KVS shows CS+ CA+ YS+ CS+

who is right? (what I am looking for is BF saverpass availability)

All KVS does is search nwa.com and present it in a pretty UI. It is not a direct query of CO's systems. And nwa.com is showing those seats as available but CO is not showing the F seat on the SJO-IAH flight as available right now (the IAH-LHR is).

You can call and ask, but I'd trust CO's systems for showing correct inventory on CO metal at this point.

There are some roundabout routings that you can use for SJO-IAH that will meet up with the later flight to LHR or you can waitlist for F on the direct while booking that segment in Y for now.

Thanks, I was experimenting yesterday looking by rewards leg by leg and found out exactly what you explain.

Question, if I recall correctly the situation was that if I book the reward as it is now (sjo-iah in Y and iah-lhr in BF) I will get THAT and nothing else, correct? (I mean, the SJO-IAH is doomed to be in Y even if seats open up later on?)

The Awards/SkyTeam Method shows composite availability when multiple flights are involved. In this case, there is CS availability on the long-haul segment, but no CS availability on the short-haul segment:

[KVS Availability Tool 5.0.1/Diamond - ORT: Awards/SkyTeam/US-NWA]
[KVS Availability Tool 5.0.1/Diamond - ORT: Awards/SkyTeam/US-NWA]

You are redeeming for a F/BF reward with one seat confirmed in Y. You need to ask them to waitlist you for the F seat on that segment and then when it opens up you'll be moved into the good seat. You should see the segment listed twice in your reservation - once in Y and once in F with a waitlist notation. If you only see it once then the agent did not process it correctly.

This is pretty much the essence of the Plan B approach. If you do not request the waitlist then they will not move you automatically but it is possible to waitlist it and get that big seat eventually.

What is "composite availability?"

NWA.com is (seemingly mistakenly) showing that the seat is available which would explain why your tool shows it as there.

There is no mistake -- this is by [their] design. NWA.com shows 'composite' availability on the search screen (step 1), e.g. CS- short-haul [+] CS+ long-haul [=] CS+ overall. Once a particular flight option is selected, it will display the booking class/cabin for each segment (in step 2).

So is "composite availability" another industry term?

No, I just made it up

composite availability= term by which a partner airline manages to sell a reward ticket......where as the actual operator of the flights ...........'hides' the fact (to the non sophisticated user) that the long haul flight does indeed have availability in the cabin requested


all this while it shows me bunches of flights on CM and VS that do NOT have ANY first/bf seat

To be fair, this isn't the operator (CO) hiding that the short segment is in Y. It is NW choosing to display that reward in F even though one segment is not. CO does the same thing all the time with some of their partner flights. I'm actually somewhat surprised that they don't do so in this case, too.

true enough but from my perspective I would (and will) take the flights if only the BF segment is available, this would certainly backfire IF there would be partner airlines that do have the full F/BF seats.

I would rather take SJO-(Y)-IAH-(BF)-LHR than CM 404-CM 210- CO 8226 which are shown as available in F/BF for 50k miles BUT....then again....when you go through the motions.....at the confirmation screen you see stuff like "well none of those flights NONE! actually have F/BF seats!"

There should be an analysis of what CO is trying to do if this is all by design

are they making money or losing money, example, me

a) do I do one flight in Y and one in BF in CO OR
b) do I pick partner flights if available thereby CO losing some $?
c) do I use a different mileage program such as AA where I MAY get the seats?
d) pay the 650 something dollars that the itinerary costs in Y?

this is the first time I try to get a F/BF award so this revelation of why it was so hard to find any availability is 'slightly' annoying , I for one would like to have the complete picture of what is available and what's not and then I will make an informed decision