ANA now (tries to) require you to have a Mileage Balance to use the Partner Search !
 

ANA has changed : you now need a mileage balance in order to use the partner award seach facilty.

Please post suggestions of how to get a mileage balance here......

EDIT :

For newcomers to the thread, here are 2 suggestions, discussed in this thread, to keep you going, if you have no miles yet in your ANA account :

Suggestion 1
Originally Posted by rankourabu

1.go to ANA International Flight Awards
2.Enter an ANA operated route
3.Click Next
4.at the bottom click on Use Star Alliance Members Airline (2nd blue button from the bottom)
5.in the near future credit something small to ANA to avoid having to do 1-4

Suggestion 2
Originally Posted by sbm12

It is still scraping the site but the URL request used gets around the fact that they are not exposing the link to users through the main UI. In other words, while they aren't showing the old link to you it still works.

I've built a GreaseMonkey script to generate the same link for the common man.

Install this little ditty: http://old.wanderingaramean.com/staralink.user.js

Then go here: https://www.ana.co.jp/asw/AMCTopServlet?type=e

Click on the Award Reservation link on the menu there and then look in the top left corner. You should see a link that says "Click for *A Search" that should take you to the *A search form. You might get an error about session expired. If you do just click on the link/button to the home page and go to ANA Mileage Club again and to Award Reservations again. It usually works but occasionally gets that session timeout issue.

Any feedback you have is welcome.

I've just noticed this. Disaster!

Does ANA still give you 200 miles for signing up? If so, I may need to create a new account. Alternatively, it looks like I'll be blowing some hotel points on a transfer.

Can you buy ANA miles? I can't see that option.

It looks like you could credit a hotel stay directly (ie not doing a transfer, crediting a stay at check-in) but that is a faff, especially given the many Priority Club promos at present that I would be sacrificing.What we may be looking for is, for example, a hotel programme with a point purchase option and a low airline transfer ratio. Priority Club is bad, for example, because you need 10k to do a transfer and even with the 'trick' that is $60 - it would be cheaper to go and stay in a HIX and credit it to ANA!

I have 40k Hilton and could move 10k of those, but 30k Hilton is even less use than 40k following devaluation. Buying 10k Hilton is $100 so that is out unless you have a balance - again, cheaper to do a night somewhere and 'double dip' the airline miles and HH points.

ANA is not in points.com so that option is out.

At least once you've got a positive balance you are good for 36 months until they expire.

EDIT - very annoyed, just noticed that they give miles for stays at Peninsula hotels, and I had a Tokyo Pen stay last year that got credited nowhere because I assumed they had no partners.

It's not as bad as it sounds. You can still use aeroplan.com to research seats. In fact, for our 2 last award flights, because they were booked > 11 months out, ANA tool didn't help anyway, as it restricted showing availability to a maximum of 330 days out. I ended up using aeroplan.com to do all the research. In fact, it helped us to find 2 x J seats on LHR - JNB on SAA. They were shown available for multiple days, as confirmed by ICC. By the time I could see them on ANA tool, they were all gone already.

How about a retro claim for the TYO Pen stay @:-)

I'm planning to credit
- a small SK domestic hop on Jul 2 or (in Q, 70% of flown miles)
- a longer Hertz rental this weekend (50 miles per day)

It was literally a year ago, can't see that still being valid!

The cheapest cheap option would be to credit one leg of a short haul *A flight, I suppose (say a £20 BMI leg) but I don't have one lined up.

I think I will bite the bullet on 10k Hilton. My 40k HH balance is now good for almost nothing anyway, and the remaining 30k I can use for £30 of John Lewis vouchers!!

Alternatively if you happen to know anyone with a G-point... 30 G-points give 10 ANA miles :D

https://www.ana.co.jp/eng/amc/refere...et/gpoint.html

Mattress run with Priority Club? (Set your earning preference to miles)

Yep. Worth noting that some (not all) of the LH galaxy airlines fares which are not eligible for accrual in DC do give miles in AMC.

What the fudge!
 

What are the alternatives while I try and credit something to ANA?

- EF for UA and LX

- I recall seeing something about child M&M accounts not having to have a positive balance to search awards but the results are restricted to the LH group? (Can someone verify this)

- Aeroplan; though I seem to recall that this was more painful than the ANA tool

- Ringing the ICC :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Sadly the ANA Mileage Mall only works in Japanese, it seems - you could probably buy an itune or similar through that.

Yes, the M&M booking engine shows LH/LX/OS/LO only and the search cannot be co-related to bmi DC availability as they don't have POS Germany that usually has better availability than other countries.

Time for Newbie Runner to swing into action and do a step by step instruction manual... its the least a new Cessna PJ HON can do for us bmi DC minions....

Signup bonus
 

I have just created a new ANA account for Mrs BiH to see if they still dished out 200 miles as a signup bonus.

They don't so that's that plan scuppered.

1.go to ANA International Flight Awards
2.Enter an ANA operated route
3.Click Next
4.at the bottom click on Use Star Alliance Members Airline (2nd blue button from the bottom)
5.in the near future credit something small to ANA to avoid having to do 1-4

^

Have a gold star! However, this workaround is unlikely to last long.

It's a bit mean on ANA's part - its not as if there is any marginal cost to them of us all using their website. That said, I would happily pay £10 a year for ANA if it was chargeable, and that is the equivalent cost of crediting a cheapo hotel stay, car hire, points transfer given it sets you up for 3 years.