Originally Posted by
jonsail
For what it is worth, on the Air Canada websites the earlier and later flights were selling for equal prices.
It's not worth anything, I'm afraid.
Originally Posted by
jonsail
I am still unsure if, in the event that a Star Alliance flight is not showing on the United website, it is EVER possible to book that flight using United miles.
Generally, no, but not for the reason you're thinking. The award search and the non-award search are completely different and will return different sets of inventory. UA may have permission to sell some flights for cash not others. Similarly, there may be award inventory for some flights and not for others. AC reserves the right to offer better availability to Aeroplan members than it does to MileagePlus members, so even if they had said that award seats were available when you called them, it might not have meant anything.
So, if you're not seeing certain non-stop flights when you do an award search, the reason is almost certainly that AC doesn't currently have any partner award space on those flights. They may open some today, tomorrow, or never; you can keep checking to find out. There are paid services (such as ExpertFlyer) that will allow you to set an alert and to be notified if space becomes available.