Reintroducing the ANA partner search link

Posted by Seth Miller on August 29, 2012 under frequent flyer, points, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools | 21 Comments to Read

Back in early 2010 ANA changed their website a bit, removing access to partner award searches for members without points in the ANA Mileage Club program. There is a workaround available by searching first for an ANA-operated route and then choosing the "Use Star Alliance Member Airlines" button but that’s a bit annoying. When the change first happened I made a GreaseMonkey script to similarly work around the issue. At some point, however, that stopped working and I got caught up in other stuff and fixing it kept getting pushed off. Well, it finally bubbled back to the top of the task list; a new script is now available!

Here’s what the site looks like without the script installed:

image

And here’s what it looks like with the script enabled:

image

As you can see, I altered the text a bit so you can see clearly that the script is enabled. Should the page change again hopefully I won’t be so derelict in getting an update published. I’ve also updated the name of the script and reset the version number to 1.0.0. You can remove the older script if it is still installed; it will not see future updates.

Also, for users of the Chrome browser, apparently Google decided that anyone who wants to publish scripts for their browser has to use their store. I’m not inherently opposed to that interface but I’m a bit miffed that they are charging $5 to folks, even those who want to give away their content, to register with the store. I’m not particularly inclined to give them the $5 so that means Chrome users have an extra step in the install process; the instructions are here. If that’s too difficult for y’all I’ll suck it up and give google the cash but I’d rather not.

I’ve tested on a few systems and browser versions and things are looking pretty good so far. If anyone runs into trouble let me know.

Related Posts:

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

  1. nelumbo said,

    Thanks a lot Seth!

  2. Beating the ANA "no miles" limitation for *A partner searches - FlyerTalk Forums said,

    [...] and change the route. But that's still a few extra clicks and pages and takes time. Or you can use my GreaseMonkey script. It puts the blue button back on the main page, saving the extra clicks: Quick, easy and still no [...]

  3. A bit of a reprieve on the Star Alliance reward search problem - The Wandering Aramean said,

    [...] (2012-8-29): See this new post for an updated version of the script which is working [...]

  4. ChineseScouse said,

    Brilliant work…as always.

  5. atxtravel said,

    Does ANA tool show all Singapore availability that’s shared with the alliance? It’s the one airline where I have a hard time finding them on United or Aeroplan with any consistency.

  6. Seth said,

    ANA has historically had a “hard block” on premium cabins for certain aircraft types operated by SQ, even though SQ will occasionally (though rarely) make that inventory available. The ANA site says:

    You may not use First class and Business class of certain aircraft which are A380-800, B777-300ER and A340-500 (code 388, 77W and 345) of Singapore Airlines (SQ) as flight awards.

    I don’t have any reason to believe that they are not still enforcing this policy.

  7. atxtravel said,

    Thanks Seth, good info. I guess finding SQ availability comes down to using their own website and calling United to see if they’ll book it. Even Expertflyer doesn’t have them.

  8. tck said,

    Can you tell me how to run the script in Safari? Sorry but I have little coding knowledge.

  9. Seth said,

    Hey there, tck. Here’s a link on how to get GreaseMonkey scripts supported in Safari: http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/11/14/how-to-run-greasemonkey-scripts-in-safari/. At step 5 in the process come back here and pick this script rather than the one they suggest.

  10. tck said,

    I can’t find a library folder. Can it be called something else?

  11. Seth said,

    I’m guessing it could be but I really have no idea. I’m not much of a MacOS person. Sorry.

    Dunno if GreaseKit (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/20718/greasekit) might be more useful.

  12. tck said,

    Do you know anything about ninja kit. It was suggested on the grease monkey download page as better. How would I run a script using that.

  13. AJ said,

    The extension must have access to all websites data? What’s that about? (using Chrome)

  14. Tips for Searching Star Alliance Award Availability | The Points Guy said,

    [...] you don’t want to transfer miles, travel blogger Seth Miller created a script that you can install that will allow you to access the [...]

  15. Jack said,

    I am getting a run time error, tried installing both in chrome and IE.

  16. Seth said,

    Instaling what? And what is giving the runtime error? Chrome will warn you against installing it directly from my site and require you to download it and install manually. And I don’t think IE supports GreaseMonkey. But neither should present anything resembling a runtime error.

  17. Crystal said,

    It keeps telling me “document” is undefined and won’t work. Grr

  18. Seth said,

    I just tested it again, Crystal, and it is working for me. At what stage in the process are you getting the error??

  19. Nathan said,

    I may be late to the party here – easiest way (2 steps) to get it to work in Chrome that I know of are just to install the plugin ‘Tampermonkey’ from http://code.google.com/p/tampermonkey/ (first link on this page)
    Then return here and Seth’s link for the script and accept it.
    Worked great for me thanks!

  20. » Aeroplan Basics – Finding Award Availability said,

    [...] trigger the search tool and that transfers take up to 48 hours to post. The Wandering Aramean has created a script to work around this and allows you to use the tool even if you have no miles in your ANA [...]

  21. Luca said,

    It wooorks! I have Chrome

    22. Add A Comment

home top