Great Updates To ANA Award Search Tool

Great Updates To ANA Award Search Tool

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Good news! Premium cabin Star Alliance inventory is now reasonably searchable again using the ANA tool!!

If that sounded like Martian to you, don’t check out just yet — I’ll explain why exactly this is good news here shortly.

Back in April Japanese airline ANA updated their frequent flier program, website, and award search tool. The ANA tool had previously been the gold standard for verifying Star Alliance award space. While united.com and aeroplan.com would occasionally display false results, ANA was pretty reliable if you were searching nonstop routes.

The April updates, however, essentially decimated the ANA tool, particularly for those of us who were using it to search premium cabin award space. While the old version of the ANA tool allowed you to search for a week of space at a time, the new version only allowed searches on a single day, among other issues.

Fortunately, many of the bugs seem to have been fixed, and it’s now possible to search a week of space in a given cabin on a particular route, among other improvements.

Why do you want to use the ANA tool?

For the most part, airlines that have a partnership with multiple other airlines make the same award space available to everyone. This is why you can typically use the British Airways website to find Cathay Pacific space, for example, even if you’re booking with Alaska or American miles. All partners typically have access to the same inventory, with additional space being held back for members of the native program (there are of course exceptions).

So, if you’re looking to redeem miles on any Star Alliance carrier, the ANA tool is a great way to verify inventory. Sometimes united.com won’t show space on a carrier, or the Air Canada Aeroplan search can’t process a more complex routing, so it’s nice to have a backup. It can also be more efficient for searching space in some cases.

Using the new new ANA tool

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you bookmark the link to the new ANA tool. It can be tricky to find otherwise. Once you’ve logged in, select “ANA International Flight Awards” from the Members Service section.

ANA-login

In what is a tremendous improvement over the April site, all classes of service are now on the same tab. This means you can select first or business class from the drop down menu, and tick the checkbox for being able to search +/- 3 days.

Using-new-ANA-tool-03

Y’all have no idea how excited I am about that little check box.

But as an example, let’s go ahead and look at first class space between Los Angeles and Frankfurt. If you want to search +/- 3 days of inventory, you must do so as a roundtrip. You can of course put in a dummy return flight (or a fake outbound).

With the dates I’d entered above, we get an error message informing us there isn’t space over our dates (hardly surprising for first class from the West Coast).

Using-new-ANA-tool-02

However, once you hit “Confirm” you can see a calendar of when there is actually award space:

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And sure enough, Lufthansa first class is available in both directions on the new dates:

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Pro Tip: When you’re using the ANA tool, “OK” means there are results that match whatever you’d requested. In this case, we were asking for one first class seat. If you want more than one seat, you’ll need to change the initial search parameters, as the ANA tool won’t otherwise tell you how many seats are available.

It’s worth noting that while the ANA tool is better, it is still a bit glitchy. For example, while I was pulling screenshots the site did error out a couple of times, generating this very angry red box:

Using-new-ANA-tool-05

This seemed odd, given the space had just been there, but to make sure I wasn’t going crazy I also checked inventory using the Aeroplan tool:

Using-new-ANA-tool-12

Which did indeed show the same inventory:

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Running the search again on the ANA tool did the trick, and the error went away. I haven’t done enough searches yet to know exactly what’s happening, but if you get a weird error it’s probably worth just trying again while the website glitches get worked out.

Estimating taxes and fees

One other update I’m appreciating is the final itinerary page on ANA now:

Using-new-ANA-tool-11

I’m a nerd, so I love that they have links to the relevant award charts and rules. This is useful given how complex some of the new ANA rules are, and I also like how transparent it is (ahem, Delta).

You can also see the full breakdown of what ANA would charge in taxes and fees, including fuel surcharges:

Using-new-ANA-tool-18

Aeroplan shows this information as well, but if you’re already using the ANA tool it’s nice to not have to go elsewhere to calculate:

Using-new-ANA-tool-19

The fees should be roughly the same in either case (and for all partners that directly pass on fuel surcharges).

Searching day-by-day

In addition to being able to search a week at a time, you can easily look at subsequent days — a feature that had been removed in April.

For example, let’s look at flights between Los Angeles and Seoul:

Using-new-ANA-tool-14

This route typically has great award space, so it’s not surprising to see nearly every day have some kind of availability (though we can’t see specifics from this view):

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Once you’ve selected a starting date, you can use the arrows at the top of the screen to navigate forwards or backwards in time:

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And the results for those dates will be displayed:

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I know this seems like a no-brainer, but not having that feature for the past few months has made using the ANA tool almost impossible, so I’m very glad to have it back.

Bottom line

In general, the site seems to be performing as expected. There are still some glitches, and inventory isn’t 99% reliable like it was in the old days, but this is a massive improvement.

Many of you won’t need to use the ANA tool today, or possibly even in the next weeks or months. However, when you do go to redeem miles it’s a very helpful tool to have, particularly now that much of the functionality has been restored.

Anyone else use the ANA tool to search award space?

Conversations (27)
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  1. Daniel Guest

    Hi Tiffany,

    Is there anyway to book a flight from a non-Star alliance member (Etihad) on ANA? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I read that you don't need any miles for the tool to show you flights on Star alliance partners, but need some miles in your account for it to show you award flights on partner airlines. I transferred 1000 Amex points and once they posted, ran the search tool, but don't see the Etihad...

    Hi Tiffany,

    Is there anyway to book a flight from a non-Star alliance member (Etihad) on ANA? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I read that you don't need any miles for the tool to show you flights on Star alliance partners, but need some miles in your account for it to show you award flights on partner airlines. I transferred 1000 Amex points and once they posted, ran the search tool, but don't see the Etihad flights I want (only Turkish Airlines show up). I confirmed the award tickets are available through Etihad's site. Any ideas?

    Thanks

  2. Tony M Guest

    Thank you for doing this! I was looking for a way to double check United searches and heard ANA would be the way to do that. I initially found old instructions but kept digging and found yours.

  3. L_mgh New Member

    Heya,

    I'm trying to check if I can redeem miles one-way. Can't seem to do one-way redemptions?

    L
    :)

  4. Jeremy Guest

    Someone commented earlier about ANA releasing more award space for their own members? I ask again because it does seem like some ANA F awards are showing up as available "OK" on the ANA website, but then when looking up the same award on Aeroplan and United, it is not available.

    Specifically, NH7 SFO-NRT on 12/15. Shows "OK" on ANA, but none available on other partners.

  5. Explore Guest

    Come on....

    Shows UA transatlantic ECONOMY award space (per UA site) but identifies it as BUSINESS.

    Can you retract your assessment that the ANA tool is better? It's lousy. And that's a shame, because UA and Aeroplan don't reliably show SAS transatlantic award space.

  6. jp01 New Member

    Tiffany

    I noticed you have 100 miles in your ANA account. Does this help with doing searches?

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ jp01 -- Not anymore. It used to be a requirement, but they've removed that restriction.

  7. dmodemd Guest

    Do you still need an active ANA account with miles in it to use the tool? Maybe I missed it but I didn't see that mentioned in the article...

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ dmodemd -- You don't need miles, but you do need an account.

  8. Michael Kao Member

    Does ANA release more award space for their own members? I asked because I'm not sure if I can see ANA space on ANA do partners have access to those spaces?

  9. Steven L. Gold

    Bookmark link doesn't work. Try https://aswbe-i.ana.co.jp/international_asw/pages/award/search/roundtrip/award_search_roundtrip_input.xhtml?CONNECTION_KIND=LAX&LANG=en

  10. Antonio Guest

    Now that United has switched over to their new website, have you noticed if it has improved or gotten worse in terms of award search?

  11. Ben Skelton Guest

    I'm seeing strange behaviour where the "ANA Award (ANA flights only)" is waitlisted but the "Star Alliance Award (Combination with Star Alliance carriers)" is listed as OK. This is for an ANA flight like NH1011. This doesn't make sense — does ANA provide less availability to its own members than Star Alliance?

    Then when I select one I get the error:

    The selected flight is available,but the class you selected is not available or no...

    I'm seeing strange behaviour where the "ANA Award (ANA flights only)" is waitlisted but the "Star Alliance Award (Combination with Star Alliance carriers)" is listed as OK. This is for an ANA flight like NH1011. This doesn't make sense — does ANA provide less availability to its own members than Star Alliance?

    Then when I select one I get the error:

    The selected flight is available,but the class you selected is not available or no setting.
    Please check User Hints for more information, and search again. (Error Code:E_A01P03_0014)

    Seems buggy.

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ Ben Skelton -- It's definitely buggy, but I haven't see that particular error yet. What day are you searching?

    2. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ Ben Skelton -- Actually, I think I just figured it out. Is there ANA space in both directions, or are you getting UA space for the return? If so, the ANA Award column will only display "Waitlisted" on the outbound, as it isn't possible to create a full ANA award on the selected dates.

  12. Steve Guest

    That checkbox has been there for at least a month.

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ Steve -- About that, yes, but I haven't had time to write about it until now.

  13. choi New Member

    is it still possible to book SQ flights intra Asia and intra Australia routes using UA miles when using this tool ?

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ choi -- Generally yes, though you'll want to plan 2-3 hours on the phone with United to get the ticket issued.

  14. Stephan Guest

    Remember also that with Aeroplan the search engine will preferentially show Air Canada flights and often their partner flights (with fuel surcharges (YQ) for a given route), and not display all flights that may be available for that route and date. It will also only show up to a certain number of flights on the website and not display other possible flight options - even if they are more suitable in some cases IME -...

    Remember also that with Aeroplan the search engine will preferentially show Air Canada flights and often their partner flights (with fuel surcharges (YQ) for a given route), and not display all flights that may be available for that route and date. It will also only show up to a certain number of flights on the website and not display other possible flight options - even if they are more suitable in some cases IME - so it should never be used for an initial overview of what is available as it is limited in scope (use UA instead).

  15. Larry Member

    Actually, it's not phantom space -- it's putting in economy segments on UA flights (even long haul) even when searching for business or first.

  16. Larry Member

    I seem to be seeing a ton of phantom space on UA flights on the ANA site at the moment -- either phantom space or space that UA.com itself isn't showing.

  17. jessie Guest

    thanks for such useful post. I am a novice in searching award seat with Star Alliance carriers (only have used United.com) so two quick question:
    1) could you provide a direct link of "Aeroplan search tool"?
    2) for both (Ana & Aeroplan), can I search availability without any membership log in?

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ jessie -- You're welcome! You do need to enroll in both programs, but there isn't a charge to do so. The link to the Aeroplan site is here: https://www4.aeroplan.com/enroll.do

      Ben also has links and phone numbers for all the search tools and frequent flyer programs here: https://onemileatatime.com/loyalty-programs-links/

  18. chitownflyer Guest

    Thanks for such an informative post. It is great to have the ANA toll back. Are the AC or OZ sites good for checking for Star awards as well for Mileage Plus members?

    1. Tiffany OMAAT

      @ chitownflyer -- The Aeroplan site is good for economy awards. I tend to find it doesn't suggest any routings that are even remotely complicated or unusual, so it's not my favorite for premium cabins. It's also fussy.

  19. Jay Guest

    Ehhhhh, it's still a pain to use in my opinion. You still get errors for multiple zones. The fact that I can't easily just search and go through the motion of trying to book a flight from JFK to JNB is absurd (in my opinion). Maybe it's better in that one zone but even then, I hit random errors or glitches when trying to use around four stops.

    I miss the old ANA website :/

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Daniel Guest

Hi Tiffany, Is there anyway to book a flight from a non-Star alliance member (Etihad) on ANA? Maybe I'm mistaken, but I read that you don't need any miles for the tool to show you flights on Star alliance partners, but need some miles in your account for it to show you award flights on partner airlines. I transferred 1000 Amex points and once they posted, ran the search tool, but don't see the Etihad flights I want (only Turkish Airlines show up). I confirmed the award tickets are available through Etihad's site. Any ideas? Thanks

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Tony M Guest

Thank you for doing this! I was looking for a way to double check United searches and heard ANA would be the way to do that. I initially found old instructions but kept digging and found yours.

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L_mgh New Member

Heya, I'm trying to check if I can redeem miles one-way. Can't seem to do one-way redemptions? L :)

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