After performing my daily search for LH award space from FRA-NRT last night, I was surprised this morning to find this message today:
The Partner Flight Award search function is not available for passengers who do not have any mileage balance.
It seems that ANA got tired of thousands of Star Alliance flyers clogging up their servers when they had no intention of ever throwing business at ANA.
Let not your heart be troubled, though: there are workarounds.
- Click on “ANA International Flight Awards”
- Enter any (valid) city pairs and any (valid) dates
- Click “Next”, NOT of Flight Search
- Scroll all the way to the bottom
- You should see “Use Star Alliance Member Airlines” button, click this to search *A availability.
ANA will probably fix this loophole soon, so I suggest you follow Gary’s advice and either transfer 1000 American Express Membership Reward points or as little as one Starpoint (for Starwood Platinum members only) to your ANA account. You can also credit hotel stays and car rentals to ANA’s mileage program.
It is a bit odd ironic that UA added the ability the search for select Star Alliance awards online the same week ANA "eliminated" this option. Perhaps an effort to cover-up UA’s Starnet blocking practice?
(Tip of the hat to Gary and Lucky)
The functionality is still there. ANA is making it a bit harder to get at the right page but it is definitely still there. I’ve got a GreaseMonkey script that is working pretty well right now. Check it out here.
@Wandering Aramean: Thanks for the link.
LH has mentioned they intend to run an A380 on FRA-DEL over the winter season. Why not book a speculative award including FRA-DEL-SIN? It is a valid *A routing, and from what I saw, there was good F availability on FRA-DEL. SQ runs a 772 on DEL-SIN, so F is bookable, though I haven’t really checked on availability.
On the downside, the FRA-DEL would only give you 7 hours in F and this kind of route would likely cost 160k miles in everything, less perhaps Aeroplan.
On the upside, you can always dream SQ swaps in an A380 for the ultimate heavyweight tag team. I am not quite sure what the busy season for DEL-SIN would be…
@Erich: Good idea. Too bad Air India’s entrance into Star Alliance continues to be delayed. I had a great trip to Delhi last year but would love to check out Mumbai.