I flew SYD-HND and HND-IAH on ANA U class upgraded to business using Pluspoints in October and return in November last year, but I selected the dates with plenty of business seats. Some were upgraded quickly while others were only cleared three to five days before the flight. You may want to have a look at their seat availability (viewable when you're trying to book with them). I prefer Polaris for the hard product (eg. seats and entertainment) but the meals and service are far better with ANA.

IAH-NRT may be an easy route to clear — I have no particular opinion on that — but UA rarely lists confirmable space on it in advance, IME. (As I’m AUS-based, IAH-NRT would be a go-to for me). They seem to reserve that for IAD-HND.

I’ve never considered trying to upgrade on ANA because the fare class requirement is too high. A RT U fare from AUS-TYO is $3600 — I could buy PE on the same dates (UA R / NH N) for $2100.

ANA PP Award Request Page Down?
 

Been trying for weeks to upgrade my ANA E class (BKK-HND) ticket using the PP request site, but it keeps saying "Please contact the source where you booked the ticket." I booked it on ANA's website (no UA codeshare) and they have my UA # in the reservation.

Ive called ANA and United 1K and they both blame each other with no way forward. I've tried different submittals (diff first/middle name combinations, adding 0 in front of the flight #, etc) with no luck. United 1K has verified they see my ANA reservations and it all checks out, but refuse to open a ticket for a possible website problem.

I (successfully) did this once in Feb of this year, so dont know whats wrong this time; has anybody else had luck?

Hardly ever see confirmable space on any USA-Japan flights, but always managed to snag an upgrade, admittedly ex. IAD and EWR, never IAH.
Never did the PlusPoints upgrade with ANA, as the flights always seem too expensive, and I never can afford even the lowest upgradable fare class...might try that though in the future to see what it's like.

If you can get one of the planes with "The Room" trust me it's worth it! It is my favorite J seat / unit in the world. And of course the food and service is vastly superior...

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8839f563b1.png

Has anyone seen this error? I have a ticket of 3 people booked in M fare class on a native ANA ticket DEL-HND (3-day stopover) NRT-LAX.I tried applying for the first segment for the 3 of us and it showed this error. I entered our names as Firstmiddle Last and the ticket number for each of us. I filled out every box that was even possible.

I didn't even select Lufthansa and its giving this? I tried 3 different 1k agents so far. The first one put in a incident ticket to the web support team, the 2nd told me they cant help with non 016 ticket stock upgrades, and the 3rd had no clue you could use pluspoints on non-United flights and is telling me that I have to apply the pluspoints on ANA's website since I bought the ticket on ANA (huh???)....Thanks for any insight from anyone in advance

Update on the above ^^^,

I called ANA to ask if there was anything off about the booking on their end and they said they cannot see any issues with the booking and that I should be able to apply PlusPoints without any issues nothing should be blocking.

If United has no answers and ANA has no answers am I just SOL for this? Would any of the passengers having a middle name being the same as the first name of any of the other passengers cause this?

Multiple reports in this thread
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...l#post35109315
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...l#post35261663
these and there may be others

multiple reports yes I read both of those but there wasn’t a replicable solution to either of those provided unless I missed it. That said I resolve this after a lot of messing around:

The fix for me was putting my dad’s name first, whose first name is our middle name, and then my mom and then myself. Did not include the middle names in the request at all just first name last name and this time I DID include the ticket numbers despite plenty of people’s advice of not including it. It seemed I had to explicitly put my dad’s name first and only when I did that did it actually work. As a litmus test, when waitlisting the 2nd flight in our itinerary, I did myself and my mother first then my dad, same error. Then I did my mother and then my dad and then me, same error. Only when my dad’s name came first did this work.

I don’t know why this is the case or what’s the backend implementation of this but just the observation I wanted to report back

Same, I've read all the other posts but was unable to reproduce their errors/resuts.
I've tried every combination of names, no/ticket, airports, etc with no joy. Thanks for the advice though.
After this experience I'm giving up on PP that I can never use.

Tried to comb through this thread to find the answer, sorry if it's there. How do I search for I fare class availability with ANA?

Search for business award inventory on united.com. More in the thread's wiki.
However not all is lost if award space is not available, you can waitlist on for ANA upgrades.

United.com doesn't show "I" award availability. A sample search just got me these fare classes:
​​​​​​J9 C9 D9 Z9 P9 O9 A9 R9 Y9 B9 M9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 L0 K0

That is expert mode. Instead do an award search for the desired segment and if an ANA business class award displays, that means there is ANA I inventory.

Star Alliance Mileage/Plus Point Glitch?
 

Hi all -

Attempting to upgrade a Business (Z) fare on NH metal (ticketed on UA, with an NH flight number, not a UA codeshare) via the UA online portal, but it keeps glitching out, for both Plus Points and Mileage/Star Alliance. The error message says there is a technical error and to call United and have an agent put the request in over the phone.

I called the Premier desk and they said there is nothing they can do - they don't have access or a way to put in a PP or SA/MP upgrade request on ANA and that if the site is down, to try another day. I asked "Well, what happens if in three more days, it's still down? How can I tell someone at United that it's not working so it can hopefully get fixed?" to which the Premier agent said "I don't know, I guess you can't."

Any ideas? Thanks all!