Hey guys. First time using EF, tinkering around with the trial period before committing to a paid membership. For background - looking to snag an award ticket on ANA to Japan next November. That's a bit too far out to book tickets just yet, but I figured I'd try getting used to the tools at my disposal beforehand. Playing around with some "what if" scenarios with flights next years just to get my feet wet.

Very new to all of this, so maybe this is my not understanding how airlines work with awards, fare codes, etc. or maybe I'm not understanding ExpertFlyer.

First observation - if I search for reward tickets on the ANA website I can do so well into September 2020. If I try the same dates on ExpertFlyer it says it's too far in the future. Is there a reason for that? Says dates that far in the future aren't supported by the airline, but the airline's website seems to work...?

In any event, I tried some August dates to see what I could learn. I picked two arbitrary dates for outbound / return, and on ANA's website I can see that there is award inventory in business class, for both legs (non-stop flights NH11/NH12 between ORD and NRT). If I try the same inquiry on ExpertFlyer it shows that there is indeed availability on the outbound, but not the return. Any reason why it wouldn't see the return leg?

Finally, I figured I'd drill into the outbound flight fare inventory to see if I could learn how many reward tickets tend to be made available in early booking. From the previous EF query it tells me that business class reward tickets are an "I" fare. If I search on that flight, no "I" fare bucket shows up at all.

Suffice to say I'm a bit confused all around here!