Originally Posted by
CHCflyer
Don't you have to credit something (anything) to the ANA account to activate the search tool? I joined them a couple of years ago and ran rampant through their search engine looking for my unreasonable needs (four J-class tickets to NZ in high season) until they introduced this rule. They may have relaxed this since, of course.
And I did find the tickets but the routing was circuitous - but that is half the fun.
There is a workaround for this - the site is set up so that if you don't have any miles with ANA, you can only access the ability to search ANA awards from the main menu, and partner or Star Alliance awards are greyed out. However if you just do a dummy search for any route that ANA flies and hit search, from the results page you can then access all the other tools including Star Alliance searches, and once you select that you then have full functionality.
ANA's site has its quirks, e.g. I find it very poor for figuring out possible connecting flights unless they are on the same carrier and an obvious route. But if you're happy to search sector by sector, it's very handy. I like the ability to do a seven-day search for any given route.
Of course it's all streets ahead of AirNZ, which must be one of the only first world airlines remaining without any ability to search on partner awards. And don't forget the mandatory NZ$100 fee per award, in addition to the taxes - really a very poor effort.