UA and CA saver award on ANA
 

What route and dates? Can help you verify availability.
For ANA, remember you cannot route from the US to Europe via China (or vice versa).

1) If you're logged into UA account with premier status and/or a UA CC, then you might see enhanced space not avail to partners.
2) ANA has no one way award.

Good point (though thankfully I'm not trying to do that!). OMG that would take forever. But I continued tinkering. I finally got MEM-EWR-GVA and ZRH-YYZ-MEM to come up for 1 in economy (saver on UA). But if I add NCE to return (NCE-ZRH-YYZ-MEM), nada. I thought any Europe city was allowed in open jaw. And I thought I could have 2 stops (3 segments) but maybe I'm wrong on one or both.

On the successful MEM-EWR-GVA and ZRH-YYZ-MEM, it only gives me flights for up to 4 on ANA but 5 on UA. And of course I need 5. Now I'm thinking I may book on UA b/c when I finally got something to stick on ANA, it was $325pp fee. On UA, it's around $70 and only 5k points more per ticket. I was really trying to find 3 economy and 2 business on the same flights in and out of Europe, thus ANA searching, but that's proven difficult. I've resisted an expertflyer account b/c I can usually make it work with regular tools, but may have to sign up for it now b/c this trip has confounded me!

So I am logged into UA but don't have status or a UA CC. Looking for RT. Again, though, excellent point re CC. I didn't realize they offered that perk. DL used to, not sure if they still do.

I tried 7/7-7/25 MEM-NCE and back (with 2 connections each direction) and get business saver option for both dates on UA but ANA finds nothing.

So I'm still trying to figure out what I can book via ANA. I realize Aer Lingus is not a partner of ANA, but they are a partner of UA evidently. Anyone ever book EI via ANA? I getting desperate mainly b/c I want to do a stopover and ANA will allow that.

You need to call in to book it. It's happened to me before. I logged in with my UA account (plat) and another house members account (no status) to confirm. I also called UA to confirm those seats were available.

If you call NH, make sure you call the US side during regular hours. If you call the overseas office, it could take 3 hours like it took me in the past. Had it not been urgent I would have just waited till the morning to call in.

You won't be able to book EI, even as a UA codeshare, on ANA as they are not a partner. Best is to build 1-ways awards verifying each segment in incognito browsers and then call NH and feed the reps the routing you want by flight numbers but have them verify the route as you build. The staff was very good to me when I did my Asia award. They even had some recommendations that I did not see during my searches.

Thanks, could UA confirm partner segments as available? Like CA? My problem seems to be that UA and CA are both showing 5+ seats available on CA flights but ANA will only go to 4.

Sorry I missed this. Call NH to confirm 5 seats than book it online. Have the agent wait on the phone as booking is a very short process.

Unfortunately there's many times NH will say it's not available though UA has it available. If UA fails or the booking is cancelled, they would offer there own space. While it's annoying you prefer to fly CA over UA but NH OTOH would not open it's own seats if something like this happened. (*YMMV, I have no status with NH which could have been the reason).

of course