Hi, I'm trying to figure out whether it's worth flying from Tokyo (HND) to HNL on ANA, NH184 on 02 Jan. If I book it through UA, I should be able to use a GPU for a Star Alliance upgrade award (to biz), right? Or I could transfer AmEx points into my ANA Mileage Bank and use miles to upgrade. Question: which of these methods will produce favourable results?
Is there a way I can check in advance whether there is upgrade space? The old link to the ANA award search tool no longer works. I ended up going to this page:
Flight Awards, and clicking on "Award Reservation" at the bottom of the page. That let me search for the flight I was after, which showed up as "Waitlisted" in business. Does that mean neither method would work, at least not until more upgrade space might be released?
The alternative would be flying UA902 from NRT. It's just a 777 though (ANA flies a 787), and looks to not even have lie-flat seats!