For award aviability on UA-operated flights, you could log into united.com using a Milieage Plus account - even if you have a 0 balance and use the the award search tool. Make sure you have the settings in your profile set to "advanced" so it will show you exactly how many award seats are available. It seems that US agents can't access all the UA award seats. They can only book them if they're showing N5 or higher. Has anyone had any luck getting UA to release their award seat inventory to US?