txflyer77

It's a risk I'd be willing to take. Holding a ticketed itinerary and needing changes is better than not holding one at all.

jsloan

They would not be able to open up award inventory on an NH flight to HND. They would, however, be able to open up award inventory on a UA flight to HND, to meet your new flight. Alternatively, you could look and see if other, more compelling options were available.

Agreed.

bloodyeyeballs

It's easier to get from HND to NRT by airport limosine bus, especially if you have checked luggage. As long as you have the time, I find it easier than getting from airport to airport in many US cities, such as JFK to LGA or EWR.

absolu7

Need to get back home to Chicago in august from Taipei, was looking at the united app for award space and it was wide open with transfer in Tokyo as of yesterday for the dates I was interested in. Today i look and literally nothing for a month.. Did ANA possibly pull the award inventory? or how does this typically work? will it come back closer to travel date?

bpe

ANA updated their August schedules today (https://www.anahd.co.jp/en/jp/topics/notice200206/). I don't know what flights were in the schedule before, but right now the only Taipei flights are 2/week HND-TSA, while Chicago is NRT-ORD. Transit between Tokyo airports isn't allowed, so Taipei - Chicago is effectively gone from their schedule, and is extremely unlikely to return before the end of August.

Their might be options with other airlines (BR and UA?), but still limited to no airport changes and no overnight transit at NRT.

Added: United seems to be flying HND-ORD 5/week, leaving at 3:45pm, before the TSA-HND flight lands at 5:45. I don't know if you can do it on a single ticket, but if not you should be able to buy two separate awards TSA-HND (NH, Mon/Fri), spend 22 hours airside in HND, and leave the following day to ORD (UA, Tue/Sat) if you really wanted to.

absolu7

bpe thank you for that info.. any idea why EVA is not releasing non-stop tpe->ord flights into the inventory?

WineCountryUA

There have been some discussion of the lack of BR/EVA space in EVA (BR) award experiences using United miles

absolu7

also i want to find out, if i have an itinerary booked with EVA (BR) for the TPE->NRT segment and a separate itin (with miles) for NRT->ORD(on ANA), how does the bag situation work, or that can be interlined? (Btw, there is limited BR from tpe->NRT)

WineCountryUA

Those are specific airline issues that should be raised in those airlines or their particular FT forums. UA as the ticketing agent has no bearing.
In general, interlining from one *A carrier to another on separate tickets is possible depending on itin specifics but you need to check with the specific airlines involved.

mwillner11

Looking at ANA J awards IAD -> HND -> SGN and found some 99k seats but there is limited availability on the return in economy In end of Aug/early September. Is this typical? The flights I found are 44k.

ichigen

Domestic code share partner flights seem to have gone from
united.com , both revenue and award search.
Only ANA and ANA Wings flights are available from united.com

https://www.ana.co.jp/en/us/plan-boo...share-flights/

jeanlucsf

I'm looking at a trip to Japan next year using ANA in business, and I have a hard time understanding ANA business award ticket availability. I have two questions:

• Looking at SFO-HND on NH 107, business award availability is not too frequent: a few days a week, seems random. The strange thing is that when it is available, it is available in both saver (88K) and everyday (175K) award. Looking at several weeks, I could not find an instance when saver was gone and everyday was available. Is this common?
• Looking at the return from Kagoshima, KOJ-HND on NH 630 followed by HND-SFO on NH 108, there are many instances of both segments being available separately (NH630 in Saver Eco, NH 108 in both Saver and Everyday Business), but the combined flight is not available at all (neither in Saver nor everyday). Looking at several weeks, it looks like it's available on Wed, Fri and Sat, but blocked on Sun, Mon, Tue and Thu. Does this make sense? Are there pricing rules that would block combining 2 available segments? Or is it a bug of UA's search engine?

I'm actually considering to book using Virgin Atlantic miles (better deal for ANA than United). Would VS see a different availability?

Kacee

It's a UA error. All partner awards are saver awards.

WineCountryUA

As mentioned this a long know display error, partner awards are just saver award -- fortunately, no one is likely to chose the wrong one.
Common, no but not unknown and seems to come in streaks -- if you see one, you will see a number.

UA does not determine partner award availability, the partner does and some partners use "married segments" logic which impacts how segments can be combined

Depends on ANA/NH

jeanlucsf

Thanks both. This answers my question #1.
I am not sure if you answered my question #2. Is it also a UA display error if flight KOJ-HND is available in Eco, flight HND-SFO is available in Business, but the combined KOJ-HND-SFO is not available?