Changes to VS Booking Classes

Not sure about TG, but CO has a nifty feature that lets you specify a class of booking you would like to select, and an SFO-LHR search in BusinessFirst with COS specified to I yields a message that "! The class of service entered is not valid. Please enter the class in the format Y, H, K. See the help page for class of service for more information." And the following url

https://www.continental.com/web/en-US/c ... Class.aspx

suggests they no longer use the "I" booking code, though they might well have done so in the past when they were in SkyTeam. Weird ...

Here is the booking I made (mix of VS, NZ and CO).
What is really intertesting is that the flight with a VS code is in G and the CO flights that are operated by VS are in I as is the NZ flight.

As you all know CO and NZ are in *A and my money is on VS joining them rather than SkyTeam

Flight: CO9740
Operated by Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Aircraft: Boeing 747-400
Fare Class: Business (I)

Flight: NZ38
Operated by Air New Zealand.
Aircraft: Boeing 777-200ER
Fare Class: Business (I)

Flight: VS201
Operated by Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Aircraft: Airbus A340-600
Fare Class: Upper Class (G)

Flight: CO9745
Operated by Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Aircraft: Airbus A340-600
Fare Class: Business (I)

Very interesting ... Now I know why I couldn't book a ticket on the CO engine as an I - 'cause it's a reward bucket. As it is on ANZ and LH. On OW and ST carriers, I is the lowest revenue bucket for biz class, instead - which is Z on *A. I'm UA, and they mark their award buckets as XC/XF (although some digging shows XC used to equal I). So it didn't quite register.