mrwunrfl

I just reread your post telling why you need the nonstop.

emd

Ok, well, I am not sure what happened or how i missed it but I missed it. Thanks you for checking United too! ANA has only opened one side of the plane for seats so far (I've been watching the fares and the seating twice a week for 6 months), so I know that they still have the entire middle section and other side of the 777 to fill up. So my feeling is that I still have time to see if fares go down some before I purchase my ticket for ANA.

I am wedded to the dates now and to ANA. Otherwise would think of United, esp. if I am Premier again by then after my temporary membership runs out at end of Feb. (if I can get them to fast track me, I could potentially make it to Premier by April). But then again, I wouldn't want to leave my daughter in caoch while I go up a class, so that won't do either...

Thanks, everyone. mrw, I owe you some sushi - maybe in Santa Monica soon. I found a funky kaiten conveyer belt sushi place there, called (of all things) "Kaiten" on the 3rd St. Promenade. Good hamachi there last week.

emd

or maybe splurge at Akwa's sushi bar (http://www.akwarestaurant.com/). Both Kaiten and Akwa are on the UA Mileage Plus dining program (which by the way is offering triple points on 1st 3 dines til end of Feb! See, I am getting good at racking up the points for next year's trip to Japan.)

mrwunrfl

Thanks for the sushi suggestions, I think I will go to Kaiten tonight!

You know that getting to Premier status by April won't be beneficial to you for your Japan trip since you are not flying United (that benefit would be E+ seats). You are going to ask for Premier Exec fasttrack, right? If they grant you a PE fasttrack then I would not assume that you will put at Premier at 12,500. You might just go from general member to Premier Exec after 25,000. The flyertalkers would be able to tell you.

Premier Exec would be beneficial for a Japan trip because you could use the Star Alliance Gold checkin lines and use the Star Gold lounges. It might be worth asking what it would take to fasttrack to 2P by April. Maybe 12,500 in two months will be enough. Again, the ft'ers can help.

If and when you get a fasttrack agreement, you ought to check your status level at united.com before/after each subsequent flight. Your status bump might appear sooner. When your status changes you want to call UA and have that status entered into your record for flights booked when you were at your old status.

When I mentioned the op-up before I was thinking that you might rebook both you and DD on United, at the same time, so that if you got an UG then she would go with you (or neither go up). I am not sure how possible that is. But I forgot that you probably would not have status, or only 1P (Premier), in time for that trip, so I would think that would be highly unlikely. Next year, when you are 2P it might be something to consider.

mrwunrfl

Looks like they extended the fare sale.

Yesterday, they showed two fares $823 and $843 for NH 1/2. The first was "Earliest travel" by Feb. 28. The second was earliest travel in March, the 15th IIRC.

And it had "Purchase by" Feb 2. Today it says Purchase by Feb 28.

kuranosuke

emd, i will be in tokyo on the 16th, the day after you leave. too bad. we will pass each other on the tracks.

mrw, how does one get on the fast track to status level? do you call mp?

mrwunrfl

Yes, by calling. I think that it helps emd's case that she is in the D.C. area as UA has had multiple special offers for WAS fliers over the last two years, so YMMV.

emd

OK, I am still getting the $1270.80 ANA fare on my dates. So I think for now the fare has not changed on my dates. Please hit me over the head with the cement club (ala Fred Flinstone) if I am being totally dense and missing something. So my plan is to keep checking twice a day for the next few wks (maybe more times a day, depending on how obsessed I get with it after missing that fare sale somehow) and also checking the available seating chart to see when they start opening the other sections in coach, as a clue to when it might start getting dicey to wait any longer to buy the seat.

KimJapan

I saw the good fare yesterday,, but yes, it's gone today. Although seatmaps are not excellent indicators of load, I did see on the seatmap that about 3/4 of the seats are assigned or blocked. Whether they are all sold is another question. Their fare class availability only shows up to 4 in each class, which isn't easy to interpret. There are 4s across the board for economy class buckets, but that could mean they have tons of seats, or that they have 4.

What you might try is a consolidator. Specify your dates and exact flights and see what they can do. Make a few phone calls.

mrwunrfl

I'm glad somebody else saw that yesterday because I was just concluding that I must have used Feb, not Apr, for the month, but I did double/triple-check.

KimJapan

Yes, I saw it.

emd

I think the seats are available but not sold, because I have been watching this flight ever since the first day it went up on ANA (because I already had my daughter's flight booked on this flight before it even went up on ANA's site, since I could book it like 320 days before the flight thru United Mileage plus awards). And those seats have never been open as avialable since I have been watching it. Do you really think a consoliodator woudl have control of that much of the flight- all of the middle seats and one whole side of seats in coach on a 777? If so, I better buy right now.

emd

I should have said "available, not sold, and not put up for grabs yet"

KimJapan

Depends on the deals made between consolidators and the airlines. ANA also has it's own package deals, and the flight between NRT and DC is very, very popular in the Japanese market as it is one of only a handful of flights that are non-stop NRT to the east coast. It is entirely possible that those seats have been blocked or sold by Japanese travel agents.