Need United award advice
 

Appreciate any advice on United award space and search tips. Ive joined ANA ff but cant figure out how to search for Star Alliance awards. I'm specifically looking for Aug 9 or 10 FCO to BOS; but also looking at FCO to EWR, JFK, PHL or IAD as alternatives to get back to the us.

I've been checking the United award site looking for Business Saver awards. I have a little restriction in that my husband and I will be coming from the port of Civitevecchia so really cant do anything earlier than maybe 10:30/11:00 am on Aug 9.

Any suggestions from the very experienced FT posters on ways to search are very much appreciated. Thanks so much.

Shouldn't you be asking folks on the ANA forum?

United has an excellent award booking tool, so there aren't any tricks needed like there are for Delta. Also remember that summer is peak travel and so one has to be flexible to find anything available at the low-tier mileage rate, especially this close to travel.

Welcome to FT!, Cyndiellen
While a little dated, the basics on using ANA's tools including the "tricks" to get around ANA's requirements can be found in
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/bmi-d...sterclass.html
and
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ad-merged.html

Award travel for peak European summer period will be very challenging at this point -- the more flexibility you can have the better.

Thanks very much. That was helpful.

Welcome to FT. There is a great blog post (link below). You want to focus on option #2 which is how you can see Star Alliance awards without having to actually put miles into your ANA FF account: http://thepointsguy.com/2011/06/how-...-availability/

Edit: I just did a quick ANA tool search and to echo what others have said this looks to be a tough one. I could only pull up a single option that showed with 2 seats and that was an FCO - FRA - EWR in saver J, but it leaves at 10:10am on August 9th and it sounds like that doesn't work with your schedule

Well, other than the fact that LO awards don't show up on UA's tool though they are bookable (via a call to UA), and IIRC there are a few other partner availability issues where the ANA tool + calling UA is the way to go.


Going to be a challenge... that's peak European travel season, and there are currently no saver awards at all on the 9th or 10th (or the 11th for that matter) that I see via a quick search--not J, not F, not Y. Space may open up as you get closer.

One thing you could do is search frequently as you get closer to the date of travel and book when something opens up. If you have particular flights in mind, you could use an Expert Flyer subscription and set up alerts for space (probably 1 seat at a time vs. 2--you may need to take separate flights if that's all you can get, then try to change the awards to the same flights if space opens up over time).

LOL, that's rich.

And a relatively true statement. Not many others (maybe AC*) are better.


*ANA is a bear to understand, even if it has more options.

It's ok at showing available options (noting the ongoing missing carriers and phantom availability problems), but errors out any time I try to book anything more complicated than CLE-FLL RT.