Yes, I noted the specificity from the beginning, to which you responded to. I was always referring to travel from Europe to Asia and Africa, in response to another post...

Sorry to dredge up this thread but I didn't see anything more current in search.

I am trying to book LX flight from JFK-ZRH in F. Expertflyer shows 1 seat available in O. LX confirms when I call them but CO can not book the flight. They see no availability.

After reading through this entire thread it appears that if a seat is available then CO should be able to ticket. Am I correct ? Or does LX keep some award seats for only their customers ? I can understand that but reading through a few differnet threads I got the feeling that CO was not blocking partner awards.

Perhaps UA has gotten their grubby little fingers into the mix.

They are notorious for blocking award seats on *A.

Per our esteemed gleff on the US DM *A redemption discussion thread, who's probably forgotten more than I've ever known about this stuff, and was subsequently put in red bold type by the US forum mod to remind everyone:

The ANA website shows partner availability and is the correct way to gauge if you can redeem a CO award. Not EF.

I'd trust a guy who's redeemed tens of millions of miles of awards on this one.

Thanks. Guess that solves it. I do not have any miles in my ANA account to check but that must be the problem.

Expertflyer is not that accurate I have found when in comes to LX. The most accurate is ANA, if you can see it there, it's bookable. I have found this to be true also with UA flights. Expertflyer will show 1XF, 2XC, 2XY - but ANA shows something else, 0 XF, 1XC, 1XY.

I have encountered situations where expertflyer showed availability but ana did not. Neither did CO.

In my experience, anything you see on ana is bookable via CO, and is the most accurate gauge of starnet availability

no need to have miles to use the ANA tool
multiple posted workarounds, such http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/14147384-post1.html

ExpertFlyer is accurate so long as the airline who's frequent flyer program you are redeeming miles with is the one you are searching for, which is why we have this note at the top of the Award/Upgrade search results:

**NOTE** The Award & Upgrade information is only valid for flights flown on the searched airline (not code shares) and only when using miles/points/certificates from the searched airline, not partner airlines.

When that is the case, EF results are 100% accurate as we get the data directly from the airline. The LX award results are from the Miles & More point of view. The UA award results are from the UA point of view. If you are looking to do a partner redemption then yes you should use the ANA tool, as the airlines show different inventory to partners then what they offer to their own frequent flyers, unfortunately.