downinit

R is definitely valid for flights on UA and LH metal, but AC does not recognize it as premium economy. I thought something was up last night when first logging into AC's website when they were first starting to make the change. AC showed the flight as 'R class : Business' and the seat selector for UA showed me the J cabin for this flight (I was able to select a seat, but it would not confirm). This was before I paid the change fee and officially confirmed the changes, so I decided to wait until the dust had settled before pursuing it further. This morning, after everything was said and done, I noticed that the BRU-YUL flight disappeared completely from AC's website.

jsloan

R isn't a Premium Economy booking class on LH, either. Fare classes aren't necessarily aligned across carriers.

If your UA itinerary has AC flight numbers, then R would be the upgrade class and I can understand why AC wouldn't confirm it. However, if your itinerary has UA flight numbers, R is a PE fare class even if the flight is operated by AC. It will map to a different fare class on AC.

downinit

I stand corrected. I just noticed that the fare class listed on LH is now G, which is very good because R earns zero miles on LH. The LH website stills shows my LAX-MUC flight with the UA flight number in R class, but they also added a separate segment below for the same flight showing the LH flight number and G class (so now the same flight is listed as two separate flights).

There does seem to be a lot of IT issues when it comes to code-shares, especially for *A. I do not claim to know anything about IT, but it seems like after all these years, they would have worked out more of the bugs by now. It would seem like airlines could save a lot of money if they just created one centralized system for all the partner airlines, and just modified the graphics and fine print according to their needs. Of course, the current system certainly creates more jobs...as well as more headaches for everyone involved.

downinit

Thanks to everyone who replied here. The Twitter team was able to finally confirm my booking in PE with AC, and I was able to select a seat by calling AC. I am still not sure what fare class my PE AC flight will fly as, since it just says 'upgraded' on AC's website (still shown as R on UA, but I will be earning on OZ, who will almost certainly defer to what AC classifies it as). Curiously enough, when I click on the fare rules on the AC website, it does show 'Business Class' for this flight, despite the fact that the seat availability is clearly for PE. Hopefully all is finally well enough, but I will not know until they let me on the plane. If AC keeps it as R, i will earn zero miles, which will lead me down a whole different hellish rabbit hole.

I will say that despite the numerous technical glitches related to the UA website and all of the codeshare blunders (AC and LH still show the same flights as two different flights on my itinerary: 1 with UA flight number and 1 with their own flight #), the customer service by United has been quite shockingly good. The Twitter team definitely stepped up and delivered what the phone agents could not do, so I would highly advise anyone with major problems to hit them up. It also helps that you can send them screenshots, which is always more effective than trying to explain something over the phone.

jsloan

It should be N.