I just booked C travel for my partner and I to go to IST next August. Here are some tips & observances.

- The US availability matches ANA/KVS 100% ... This is an incredibly powerful tool folks .... US does not limit redemption any further than the *A does already. Do a search for "starnet" over in the UA forum and you'll realize how lucky we are.

- The woman I got at the CP desk was AMAZING. Truly fantastic. Told me great tourist tips for things to do in IST. She was shocked when I essentially told her the exact dates, flights, times, airlines of flights that had C inventory available.

Overall, a very satisfactory experience with US. Great phone service, easy redemption, no added restrictions. ^

I had a similar experience - I was booking business class from BOS-FCO. The difference was that I booked 30 hours in advance. They found me the flights I wanted, gave me a choice of US, UA, LX or LH (I chose Swiss and it was wonderful.) A day and a half after booking I was in Rome! Mine wasn't booked with the CP desk, it was booked with Mexico City International Awards center.

US DOES GET SOME THINGS RIGHT :)

Overall, a very satisfactory experience with US. Great phone service, easy redemption, no added restrictions. ^

Another ^ here. Had a very similar experience recently booking 2 F seats to NZ. Really friendly agents, and very helpful and explanatory as well.

Definitely ^ - and ^^ for no Starnet filtering!

Same experience, booking to SJU Dec 22-31. Very friendly and helpful with a complicated booking ... me paying and upgrading, my wife and kids going on award travel, and with all of us (except wife and me) coming from different locations. Even helped me save substantial money on my paid fare.^

I just booked C travel for my partner and I go to to IST next August.

Great to hear since international awards have to the best use of all these miles we accumulate.

What airline did you use?

Great to hear since international awards have to the best use of all these miles we accumulate.

What airline did you use?

LH C via FRA on the way there and MUC on the way back.

Another ^ here. Had a very similar experience recently booking 2 F seats to NZ. Really friendly agents, and very helpful and explanatory as well.

Definitely ^ - and ^^ for no Starnet filtering!

WOW! I am SO excited to read your post! I hope to do the same thing one day. I have been saving up my USAirways miles (over 140K right now) and hope to go to NZ in the next year or two by using them to get a first class ticket. Do you mind sharing the details of what airline, how you went about finding the seats and redeeming your miles for them? How many miles did it take and what route did you find?

hope to go to NZ in the next year

Good luck, Air NZ is one of the hardest * partners to find availability on (and they only have C, no F). But, it has been done in the past so all hope is not lost.

And, to echo what the OP said, I booked award travel two nights ago with the CP desk to KUL in C on TG (x2). Agent was phenomenal. Together we found something that worked.

As much as I complain about US, the one thing I've always appreciated is how easy it is (for me) to use miles to go the places I want to go. It's almost disheartening to see my DM balance down to only 2k miles.

Next year I'll be trying to redeem (n)OnePass (hopefully to SEZ). Already have almost 100k in that bank. I'll let ya'll know how it goes.

A friend who is trying to come with me and is attempting to book via UA miles cannot find availability even though ANA says it's there.

A HUGE ^^^^^^^^^ to US Airways for no Starnet filtering!!

This happened for me too. A LH award flight I could see in the ANA tool either didn't appear on the UA agent's screen at all or came up as unavailable. The story varied from call to call. Upon calling US, it showed up and was booked the first time. This was at Christmas. Very good to know.

To poster regarding NZ flights, I got one in business this summer through UA without too much trouble. It's possible. I wasn't aware at the time it is so difficult. It was about 4 months before the flight. Nice onboard service, nice LAX lounge. Persevere!

I had a an easy experience booking an award LHR-BKK on Thai .

My only complaint was that they needed to issue paper tickets, which I expected, but then mailed them to an address in the US I don't use anymore despite telling me they'd ship them to London.

If time is short you may want to book at an airport to ensure you get your tickets in hand. It took me an extra couple of weeks to hunt the tickets down and then ship them at my own cost back to London.

Just booked an award ticket for departure next month to Brussels with a return from Barcelona. Very painless. Yes, I realize it's January but there was tons of availability. None of the flights are on US metal.

In my experience the CP desk has always worked wonders when it comes to helping. The thing I admire most is the work you did up front to make things work out. That leads to my question " Can you give the details on how to do what you did?" I have searched on this a few times even tried ANA and it always defeated me. Maybe I am just dense, but I would really like to know how to do what you have done.
Thanks in advance.

Get an ANA mileage account. You can then use their web site to search *A awards.

However, their web site is kinda slow and cumbersome, and the interface is kinda confusing. Plus searching takes a while.

So - download the KVS Availability tool:
http://kvs.unrealnetwork.com/Tool/?Source=EXEHLP&Version=3.0.2&SystemCode=S-347C3249&RegLevel=Platinum&RegState=1

Pay a $30 registration fee to the author, and plug in your ANA mileage account/password into it and you've got full, fast, easy robust searches of *A (and SkyTeam and Oneworld for that matter) award availability.

Get an ANA mileage account. You can then use their web site to search *A awards.

However, their web site is kinda slow and cumbersome, and the interface is kinda confusing. Plus searching takes a while.

So - download the KVS Availability tool:
http://kvs.unrealnetwork.com/Tool/?Source=EXEHLP&Version=3.0.2&SystemCode=S-347C3249&RegLevel=Platinum&RegState=1

Pay a $30 registration fee to the author, and plug in your ANA mileage account/password into it and you've got full, fast, easy robust searches of *A (and SkyTeam and Oneworld for that matter) award availability.

Thank you! I think this is the first time I have seen the complete directions and information regarding the tool, including the registration fee, etc. ^

. . . The US availability matches ANA/KVS 100%. . .

I'm happy you were to get your itinerary. However, this statement is not accurate. In my considerable experience with the ANA tool, US availability matching ANA availability depends upon the airline.

For example, on multiple recent occasions, I have found SQ F or J inventory on the NH website, but US would only have coach availability. Same situation with one flight on NZ (Y, but no J). I made multiple attempts, with different agents, including convincing agents to plug in the flight numbers to make a request manually, but all they could find was Y, no premium classes.

I don't mean to take away from the NH tool at all, as it's the best thing we have to find Star Alliance availability, but I think it's important that people's expectations are in order when using it. It's not a 100% match.

I'm happy you were to get your itinerary. However, this statement is not accurate. In my considerable experience with the ANA tool, US availability matching ANA availability depends upon the airline.

For example, on multiple recent occasions, I have found SQ F or J inventory on the NH website, but US would only have coach availability. Same situation with one flight on NZ (Y, but no J). I made multiple attempts, with different agents, including convincing agents to plug in the flight numbers to make a request manually, but all they could find was Y, no premium classes.

I don't mean to take away from the NH tool at all, as it's the best thing we have to find Star Alliance availability, but I think it's important that people's expectations are in order when using it. It's not a 100% match.

Good information. In my experience it's always matched 100%. Regardless, US matches to ANA MUCH better than UA does. With UA the ANA tool is nothing more than guidance due to the starnet filtering.

Never had any problems booking awards in C to Asia. My wife and I have done 4 sofar in 3 years. We just returned from a trip JFK-BKK (Thai), return BKK-SIN (2 day planned layover)-FRA-JFK (SQ: fantastic). had it booked in June. 2nd trip this year, earlier trip was RT JFK-BKK on Thai in April. I have used Gold and Plat lines and except for our 1st trip, for which I called without prior research, all trips were booked within 10-15 minutes after research on ANA. For one I even changed the dates without problems.