One of the most useful tools for searching Star Alliance award space is the ANA award search tool, which most accurately displays Star Alliance award availability in my experience.

Just this morning I noticed a pretty nice improvement whereby it’s now possible to search for award availability seven days at a time.

As always just enter your preferred dates and routes.

After that in the past you would click “Flight Search,” though now they added a “7-Day Availability” search option.

On the next page you’ll be asked to enter your preferred cabin and to confirm your dates and route.

The next page displays a really handy matrix which displays all award availability on nonstop flights for the city pair.

What makes this especially useful is that both the Aeroplan and United websites don’t accurately display Lufthansa first class award space anymore. Lufthansa only releases first class award space to Star Alliance partners within two weeks of departure, so now you can use the ANA tool to search a week at a time for Lufthansa first class award availability. That’s not to say there’s going to be all that much space, but at least you can verify it quickly. ;)

Posted on July 9th, 2012 by lucky
Filed under: Advice, ANA, Awards | 22 Comments »

  1. July 9th, 2012 at 7:31 pm

    Andrew said,

    It is cool, but hasn’t that been there for the past couple months? I booked a trip in May and I’ve been using that to look for LH F space (just as you suggest) every couple days for the past few weeks.

  2. July 9th, 2012 at 7:45 pm

    The Weekly Flyer said,

    Agree, is cool, and agree, has been there for a while now. Awesome tool.

  3. July 9th, 2012 at 7:51 pm

    Cruisr said,

    Yup, been there for at least a few months. Very useful.

  4. July 9th, 2012 at 7:52 pm

    lucky said,

    Whoops, sorry guys! Shows the “bubble” I live in. Haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere, so hopefully it’s at least useful to someone else.

  5. July 9th, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    Mike said,

    It’s cool Ben, we all live in bubbles of our own. I had a column published in IF and made a mistake in one of the sentences in terms I routing. I say oh well, hope no takes my info for gospel.

  6. July 9th, 2012 at 8:31 pm

    caveman said,

    @ Ben – Is there a way to search star award space for Pakistan using ANA. It appears that you can only search for destinations served by ANA. I wanted to look for an award space from BKK-ISB on Thai Airways but did not see any option.

  7. July 9th, 2012 at 8:32 pm

    ArizonaGuy said,

    Hah. It’s been supported by KVS for most of that time too. :)

  8. July 9th, 2012 at 8:36 pm

    HansGolden said,

    The workaround for when you don’t have any ANA miles doesn’t seem to be working anymore, unless I’m missing something.

  9. July 9th, 2012 at 8:46 pm

    Solar said,

    Give Ben a break- we’ve all been in SQ dream land the past 48 hours.

  10. July 9th, 2012 at 9:25 pm

    hobo13 said,

    This has been around for ages. In fact, I think I told you about it once, and you were like, ‘wow, cool’!

  11. July 9th, 2012 at 9:31 pm

    Lee said,

    Its been like that for a while! Where have u been ? Nice thing is that the 7 day search only does it for nonstop flights.

  12. July 9th, 2012 at 9:54 pm

    chitownflyer said,

    The ability to search NH and Star awards for a 7 day range was added recently in one of the KVS Tool updates. Your post shows that availability is displayed more clearly when searching directly on the NH site. Thanks for the heads up.

  13. July 9th, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    theblakefish said,

    It’s not the most intuitive tool, nor is it easy to find, use, or sign-up for…but this will be great to use with the new feature!!

  14. July 10th, 2012 at 2:10 am

    Matthew said,

    @caveman: Use united.com

    @HansGolden: It still works for me.

  15. July 10th, 2012 at 9:12 am

    LK said,

    Very nice. Thanks!

  16. July 10th, 2012 at 10:38 am

    HansGolden said,

    Very nice to see that KVS feature! Will use that instead of messing with ANA site. Much nicer.

  17. July 10th, 2012 at 10:38 am

    HansGolden said,

    Thanks for the confo, Matthew, tho.

  18. July 10th, 2012 at 11:22 am

    Phil said,

    I have 0 miles in my acct. and I can’t click on Partner Flight Awards (it’s grayed out). Do I need at least 1 mile in my acct.? What’s the cheapest way to add a few miles to my acct.?

    Thanks!

  19. July 10th, 2012 at 11:26 am

    lucky said,

    @ Phil — The easiest way is to transfer 1,000 miles from either Membership Rewards or SPG.

  20. July 10th, 2012 at 2:13 pm

    Chas said,

    Another trick that has helped me: the ANA tool will not show availability within 3 days of the outbound departure (due to NH award rules); even if there is space on these flights, they will show up as unavailable. You can get around this by searching “backwards.” E.g. if you are trying to search JFK-FRA over the 7 days immediately following today, instead search for FRA-JFK, and you can view the JFK-FRA availability in the “return” segment of your search (where the 3-day rule isn’t programmed in).

  21. July 10th, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    Graham said,

    Dear Luky
    For search of award tickets on *A, ANA requires minimum miles! Do I need to collect some miles just to use this function? Thanks
    Graham

  22. July 10th, 2012 at 6:42 pm

    lucky said,

    @ Graham — You do unfortunately. You can transfer points from AmEx Membership Rewards or SPG.

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