using continental website to search for *A award availability
 

hi everyone

i have seen a few posts saying that the CO website can be used to search for *A award availability but i have tried to read any related posts and also searched everywhere on the website but i can only find UA and CO flights.

how can i search for the other carriers? would appreciate some help.

thank you very much.

there is no particular trick AFAIK. Just search for your routes...and it will present whatever is available (at least thats what the website is supposed to do).

You may have to call in if you are interested in a specific partner airline / route.

You have to put in a route that those partners serve and it has to be one of the dozen or so partners that CO displays online. I was able to find BD and VS flights this week online without trouble by searching EDI/GLA-LHR and LHR-NYC.

But if you really want to search all *A partners you'll be better off with ANA as your search engine.

Some searches I have done also suggest that origin and destination must be CO-served to be award-searchable on co.com. Have they improved upon that?

I just searched CAI-WAW - both cities that CO doesn't serve - and received a number of options with MS and LO service.

ah i see..

thank you snod08, sbm12, 3Cforme

appreciate the replies

I was recently searching for flights from BUR and I got an error message because Co doesn't service that airport. However, when I searched "Los Angeles-All Airports", results for BUR were included

In May there used to be alot of Air China availability in Asia, but it seems to have been removed.

I'm looking to book two J/C awards phx-lhr over christmas. As a plat will I potentially see award availabilty that non-plats won't?

Yes, apparently you should see better availability......

Got it, thanks. Im seeing plenty of availability (saver biz) on 12/24, but return on 12/30 is shite, unless I want to connect in Warsaw. Perhaps as recommended above I will do segment-segment searches instead of just inputting lhr-phx.

Definitely break it up. On 12/30, I see LHR-IAD-LAS-PHX on VS connecting to UA, connecting to US. As an aside, kind of amusing how the carriers get progressively worse with each connection. ;)

Anyhow, you can always grab that and watch for something better to open up. Or just watch for UA IAD-PHX to open up, and you can tweak that. Though I'd try to keep the VS if you can. It's a fun J product if you haven't done it before, and the LHR clubhouse is excellent.

Interesting. I just again tried DAB (served by US) - PWM (served by CO, US, UA) and got this award search error:

Continental or its partners serve these cities but do not publish schedules or fares between them. It may be possible to construct an itinerary using two separate fares by calling 1-800-300-1547.

In fact, there is a simple DAB-CLT-PWM sold by US as well as dozens of two-segment routings through EWR/ORD/PHL/DCA.

I withdraw my generalization that both cities must be CO served, but it seems there are certain complexities.

It's not really complex, it's just that there's nothing available that day. Getting an error is correct, just the error message language is not accurate.

Punch in another set of dates with availability, and you'll get results.

+1. Air Canada availability is often ephemerally available via CO website. The next day? NADA...

Wouldn't it be nice if it was consistently excellent at reflecting true partner availability? I mean, isn't it 100% cheaper to book online travel than depending on an employee digging through the Byzantine CO/*A system for 45 minutes?