I Hate the ANA Award Booking Tool!
 

:mad:

I know that UA's award availability may not be the same as NH's but I'm finding the lack of seats on UA a bit ridiculous. Here's what I've tried to book...

21/8 LHR/LCY - FRA (on ANA 14/15 LH flights all available in Y-cls)
22/8 FRA - DFW (on ANA the nonstop shows available)

The return was also available.

However, when I call UA she tells me that not even one of the LON - FRA flights has availability, nor is the FRA-DFW available. I tried days either side and it's the same. Is it just that UA no longer offers LH seats at all? This just seems too hard to believe. Should I call over and over until I get an agent who can "see" the flights or is it just pointless? All she could do for me is offer F-class awards at 120,000 miles. A bit more than I was looking to spend! :mad:

I Hate the ANA Award Booking Tool for teasing me
 

:mad:

Calling UA India again, I just asked for flights LON-FRA and I chose random dates in Feb next year. She still shows no LH flights available at all which seems to indicate that UA are no longer offering LH for award travel at all. Why???

:mad:

Yes, but at least the ANA website is much more user friendly and usable than the new "improved" .bomb for researching award availability.

Perhaps you should direct your anger at UA for:
(1) Not providing a tool that lets you to see the rewards available to you
(2) Offering fewer awards than ANA

Hating the ANA tool for not supporting you as a UA Mileage Plus member is rather like hating your car keys for not unlocking your apartment door.

I agree with jib71, you should blame United, not the ANA tool!
And yes, United is known to block all seats on LH for long and somewhat random periods.

Quite right. The ANA tool is fantastic for those of us in other * airlines. The availability matches pretty perfectly with that under the BD programme. Problems encountered by UA members are with UA itself, not ANA.

I love the ANA tool.
I hate UA"s Starnet filtering/blocking.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get someone at UA to offer me LH seats? It seems to me that it should be against *A conditions to block certain carriers from redemption. Is it that LH charges more to UA than other carriers for award seats? I've had no trouble getting UA award tickets using C class on SQ in the past so surely LH shouldn't be hard.

You can try to get the agent to check availability on individual segments by feeding him/her flight numbers.

For whatever reason, the blocking seems to be most problematic with LH.

Nobody knows exactly why is it that LH is filtered so heavily, especially considering that other airlines in the LH group (LX, OS, LO) are not filtered at all. There seems to be some kind of quota for UA redemptions on LH; once it's reached no more redemptions are possible.

You can try swapping your UA miles with miles from another *A program which doesn't filter LH on CC.

Or you can try to get an agent to do a manual longsell, but I think the chances of this working are nowadays quite slim.

Very probably UA's as well - the revenue sharing agreement with LH probably makes them impose similarly ridiculous restrictions as on their own metal :rolleyes: ...

Who at UA do we complain too?

Would it be of any use to complain to Business Traveler Magazine, or someone similar ?

There is nothing to stop them from filtering, as the MP T&C surely allows them to do so, but at least UA would have to come clean on what they are doing.

Good idea, I just wrote to them. Maybe I'll get the prize for "letter of the month" :D

By the way, UA did offer me LHR-YUL-YYZ-DFW on the way out and DFW-CLT-LGA/JFK-FRA-LHR on the way back. Great alternative, eh? :p

The UA's filtering on LH/SQ/TQ award seats has been discussed ad nauseam here on FT.

Personally I don't believe that there are any "quotas" assessed by other *A carriers to UA. UA simply doesn't want MP members to redeem on other *A carriers that would result UA actually paying them.

OP's rant has nothing to do with NH that provides excellent tool for *A redemption seat availability. I just hope that these "rants" don't make the tool to disappear.