In my post last month with extensive tips for successful award redemption I mentioned the All Nippon Airways frequent flyer program award search site as a useful tool for finding available Star Alliance award availability.

There’s a helpful Flyertalk thread in the bmi Diamond Club forum that explains step-by-step what the aforementioned website does and how to use it. Thought it would be helpful to pass this along to those new at using the tool to help find their awards.

As I noted in my award booking tips post, the ANA website does not offer access to Air China or Swiss award inventory (though I provide a work-around for online availability of Swiss awards). And I also note that what the ANA site shows is not a perfect match for what United will permit you to book — ANA will show what award seats are being offered but United tens to deny their frequent flyers access to some of these seats (with agents frequently incorrectly blaming their Star Alliance partners for the lack of availability). But even for United, the ANA site is a very good start.