oliver2002

It should be visible & available to the *A partners... in the good old days bmi would have been able to grab it, alas that is history.

hausrath

This morning I've been trying to book LH417 IAD-FRA on 6/23 (two days from now). united.com shows 2 F seats available, but when I call UA to change my ticket, they only see 1.

Ended up booking through Miami, but it requires an extra connection...

Duke777

Thanks. It's for July 11. Looks like you've pulled July 1. Hopefully it becomes available closer in.

oliver2002

I pulled data for July 11, I just masked the entry so that so one notices...

LufthansaFlyer

in "theory" that could now be long sold.....

Duke777

So I should call UA back and see if they can long sell it? In that case, would I be able to confirm immediately or is it like waitlisting? I've read some of the posts on long selling, but still a bit confused. Thanks

LufthansaFlyer

You can't be wait-listed for the seat you would know immediately if the seat is there for you.

At this point its calling in and hoping 1) the seat has been made available through normal updates, or 2) you request the rep contact LH with an long sell request and hope you have a willing agent. Call several times a day would NOT be inappropriate.

It becomes like the directions on a bottle of shampoo....Wash/Rinse/Repeat. It may take a few cycles!

MtRoot

I was able to change an award ticket with UA mile from FRA-ZRH-YUL-ORD-PIT (LX F) to FRA-IAD-PIT (LH418 in F) on June 20 for June 23 flight (saw availability on NH). Really excited to experience the new a/c and F seat!

My strategy these days is to book whatever available (even UA F) and start checking availability of the desired carrier/flight 2 weeks out.

chinatraderjmr

Why iseveryone here wasting their time checking the UA/AC or MM sites for MP LH awards? Just use ANA tool. You may not like what you see but it's better then calling and getting answers you don't like. At least you know when you see it on ANA, UA can sell it (as long as no one grabs it first)

ymmot73

I wouldn't say a waste of time. Tedious, yes. But worth it. Today I booked LH 419 (Ord-FRA) and LH 710 (FRA-NRT) next week in First Class on both flights. There were many calls over the course of 2 hours to decipher out the phantom from real seats, but clearly worth the time. And since the ANA tool can't be used within 7 days, UA was helpful if not perfect

RufussCkingston

The ANA tool certainly can be used within 7 days (though it is 3 business days now), you just need to do the search in reverse using the same days for departure and return. So if you want to see what ANA has for LAX-FRA for tomorrow, you would put in FRA-LAX with the Dep and Return as 6/22. The FRA-LAX segments will show up as dashes since it is not bookable due to the 3day rule, but the LAX-FRA segments will show up. Been doing this for over a year now! This same technique works as well on the 7day availability option that ANA introduced.

Of course UA and AP are good for showing some routings that ANA does not show unless you go segment by segment, and of course 2+ stops segments as well.

RCK

UnitedConnection

Thought I would share some findings that may help others.

I have an award coming up in a couple weeks that I did not want to miss out on F for, and as a result embarked on a meticulous availability-searching regimen, including detailed logs of every search I conducted over the course of several weeks. For the 6 or so segments I was interested in potentially flying, I conducted searches 2-4 times a day at varying times. On days I was expecting availability to open up, I was often searching every 5 minutes for the half hour before the time I expected that to occur. For each search, I noted the time of the search and the next ~4 weeks of availability on the route. One important note: the routes I was focused on all either originated or terminated in FRA, so my results may not extrapolate broadly across all non-FRA F space. That said, I collected a lot of data on the flights I was searching, enough that several patterns emerged very consistently.

Here's what I found:

-Despite posts to the contrary, I've found that LH is consistently releasing F seats around 5 PM EDT 15 days before the day of departure.

-This is the absolute earliest I have seen F seats released, and many seats are released at this precise (+/- no more than 10 minutes) time.

-On a given flight, seats are typically released in pairs, and I did not see any more than two seats released at a time in my searches.

-There is no reliable way to predict which flights will have seats that open up at the 15 day @ 5 PM window, though for the routes I was monitoring, seats not becoming available at that time was the exception, not the rule, and I found that (as you'd expect) the flights for which seats didn't open up at the window were often on heavy travel days (Fri/Sat/Mon).

-After the 15 days @ 5 PM window, when seats become available is completely random, with no identifiable patterns. That said, once within the 15 day window, the closer you are to departure, the more likely F seats are available. Inventory seems to load and unload at random times of day at this point, however, not necessarily at 5 PM EDT.

Hope this is helpful to others trying to book these (sometimes annoyingly elusive) seats.

chinatraderjmr

Not true. You can use ANA tool for tmrw if you want. Just reverse the search so your outbound looks like the inbound. It will show you availability starting tomorrow

Cargojon

Guys just a quick question - what's the easiest way to dump about 50 miles into an ANA account? Flowers, something like that? I can dump 1000 Amex points in there, but I'd hate to part with that many points just to open up the ANA tool....

Looks like if I wanna fuel up in a Japanese gas station, I'm in business, but I can't find much else. ^

oliver2002

Was this for eastbound TATL flights? Or any direction?