sannmann

I booked a trip in Business Class (P fare) over the pond on United, connecting at LHR to Germanwings.

My United itinerary says that my Germanwings flight, a UA codeshare in P class, is in Business Class. However, if I remember correctly, Germanwings does not offer Business Class; rather, it has Best, Smart, and Basic fares. Indeed, if I pull up the itinerary on the Germanwings website, it shows me booked in a Smart fare. What's going on here?

JVPhoto

That sucks it should be the BEST fare (I've done the same thing before booking UA J to TXL through LHR) where you get the first 1-4 rows which have the middle blocked out a la the rest of intra-Euro J class.
On the 4U site it's not letting you select the first rows right?

sannmann

It's not letting me pick any seats. Just shows Smart fare and has auto-assigned me seat 5A, which does not match up with the Best seats.

JVPhoto

Ya that's not BEST. Someone else may know better if this means a call to UA and they can see it didn't map to 4U "J" and they need to re-issue the ticket.

enviroian

Flew germanwings over Christmas fra-Lhr. Make sure you get row 1 bulkhead. Flight attendant will allow you to order anything free of charge off the BOB menu. Good food!

sannmann

I sent a PM to UAInsider. Hopefully, s/he can fix the issue.

cfischer

I have seen before that not all 'P' fares map to 'business' on 4U. That sucks and I agree that UA needs to make this right if they confirm business on the codeshare flight.
4U will be gone soon, so that will be another problem.

JVPhoto

Where is 4U going? Getting called Eurowings? I didn't think anything was changing in terms of flights or the partnership.

transportprof

Where is it going?

RobOnLI

I booked one of these fares last year with a UA/4U combination in "P". The 4U segment came up as SMART I think.

I was on the phone with the 1K desk for over 30 minutes after the ticket was issued getting them to fix it. Ultimately they had to change the booking code on the 4U segment from P to J and that worked fine. They were able to do this somehow - most likely after re-creating my itinerary on the website which showed it as a business class fare...even though 4U doesn't have a "business class".

I agree with the other poster. Row 1 window for me every time I fly 4U. The snacks and beverages are fine. After all, you're typically only flying 4U for a sub-2 hour flight each time so it's not a big deal.

-RM

jsloan

Three things may be at play here. First, United.com only has one mapping from fare class to description; when it displays flights from other airlines, the information is often gibberish. Second, the mapping between fare classes as part of a codeshare is opaque; UA's P bucket could map to just about anything on 4U. Third, even if you weren't using a codeshare, the mapping between one carrier's fare and the fare class on another carrier is dependent upon the specific fare and the availability of the other carrier's flight. I pulled up a sample UA P fare on ExpertFlyer and looked at the 4U booking codes; this particular fare will map to 4U D, J, and I, in that order.

Given the other advice on this thread, I'd call and ask, but, in general, this has been a problem with codeshares -- as far as booking class goes, you never really know what you're going to get, except via anecdotal evidence.

sannmann

Update: After 40 minutes on the phone with the Premier desk, the rate desk, and web support, issue seems to have been corrected. The ticket was reissued with the LHR-STR segment in D class as a non-codeshare. Pulled up the itinerary on the Germanwings website, where it now shows me in row 1. Very annoying that United's systems do not talk well with Germanwings' systems.

Bottom line: Germanwings cannot see you're supposed to be in Business class if you're booked as a UA codeshare.

WineCountryUA

based on my 4U experience, it willn't be your last issue. See how the return check-in and standard (USA) carryon goes.

sannmann

Standard U.S. carry-on size is an issue on all of the European carriers. All of the European carriers use a smaller sizer and limit carry-ons to 8kg. I was almost denied boarding over this issue on a Swiss flight last month.

WineCountryUA

yes but most of the those carriers will then check the bag to the destination. In my case, they wanted to check to just to LHR because the agent could not figure out how to do it. And no BP for the flight out of LHR.
I complained at the LH lounge and the LH agent just sigh -- said they hear those issues very day about 4U.