Lufthansa First Class WIDE OPEN Frankfurt To Tokyo Haneda!

70k right? And is UA the only possible F that far or for US to Europe?

@ E -- The rest of Asia is 70K miles one-way, but Japan is just 67.5K miles (same cost as going to Europe). Yep, United is the only airline that releases first class that far out to partner airlines to Europe.

One or more flights are no longer available for this request. Please begin your search again.

I see this message for everything I have tried to book.

aweesome find, too bad i have no vacation left in 2014!

Thanks. What do you recommend for a full rt itinerary with stops in F. The only thing I can think of for that far out with this is us-europe(ua)-asia-(lh)-us(ua/ca)?

Getting an error each time trying to search for the full one-way:

We were not able to find any available flights for award travel meeting your requirements.

How do you get USA-FRA on F? continue to HND

Great to know! @Lantean, 2014 hasn't even started yet and you don't have vacation days anymore?!?

@ Cliburn @ Matt -- Hmmm, was able to price it earlier. Let me play with it a bit.

So you are recommending booking SFO-FRA on UA and then picking up the LH flight? Returning same way? Stopover at FRA allowed I would assume?

@ E -- You could potentially return on Asiana, Air China, ANA, or Thai to Europe and then United back to the US. All options that are at least sometimes available.

Are you allowed to fly from usa to MUC and then to FRA to go to HND and still have a valid USA-->Japan via Europe?

@ Jason -- You'd have to book another airline, like United. That's the only Star Alliance airline with saver first class award space available to partners in advance.

Is it possible to book LAX-FRA (Connection) - HND via United award? I tried to search but it always give me error messages. Should I call?

My ideal is LAX-FRA-HND-TPE-LAX so can have stopover in Japan or TPE. Is this allowed?

@ JustSaying -- That would be the best option. You're allowed a stopover on a roundtrip.

@ David -- Yep, that's absolutely valid.

I see the availability, but even when I have tried to book a single seat FRA-NRT nonstop I get the error. Tried different dates...

@ K -- You could indeed make Taipei your destination if you'd like. It would cost 70,000 miles one-way instead of 67,500 miles, but is still a very good deal.

@Joey

sadly, yes. i have three trips to New Zealand, Slovakia and Vietnam all planned out. no more vacation days left. 🙁

Lucky, thanks for posting this useful information to the frequent traveler community. LH F is an awesome product.

Has UA stopped displaying LO flights? I can see award seats available on ANA but not on UA.

@ David -- Yep, they haven't displayed most LOT award space for quite a while now unfortunately.

@lucky, but can I book it on the phone?

Getting the error message once it looks for the LH segment

Given that the only choice in F at this time for US-FRA is on United, I'll have to pass. Having flown once on United's "GlobalFirst" was more than enough.

If I book for 67K UAL:

JFK-FRA Buiness
FRA-HND F

Can I later call UA to see if JFK-FRA F opens up with in 14 days of departure?

@Ken Y.

what was wrong with it? I have only flown businessfirst EWR-MUC on United. It was OK. not memorable but adequate for business class. i always wondered what GlobalFirst is like.

@Lantean

I have to agree with @Ken Y. UA GlobalFirst is not anything more than a nicer seat. The soft product and FAs are international business-class level at best. Not a bad way to travel, but is it worth the extra miles/$'s? Even the ORD GF lounge is nicer than the regular lounge, but not as nice as other airlines F lounges.

I do see plenty of LH 1st availability.

If you wanted to go Japan to USA via Frankfurt or Munich (or vice versa) and book LH first, doesn't United require you to also find 1st class saver space across the Atlantic in order to get the 67,500 price? They previously told me that I can't combine a saver business flight across the Atlantic with a first class flight from Europe to Asia without paying more. That is, you can't "downgrade" yourself on the Atlantic flight to save miles. Does that sound right?

Couldn't you theoretically book USA-FRA in LH biz (with FRA-HND in LH F) and then just switch to F when it becomes available 14 days out? I'm not sure if UA has made clear whether this would be ok post Feb 1 though.

@ Jason -- That would require the ticket to be reissued, and based on my understanding of the new rules would trigger the ticket to be repriced at the post-February 1 levels, unfortunately.

I need FRA to ANYWHERE in the US in 1st on Lufthansa in Nov next year :(... HND is the wrong direction! (can't incorporate into DFW-PHX-LAX-TPE-SGN, CNX-BKK-CDG... DFW trip i'm trying to finish up. Biz on outgoing, 1st on return.

I want to book NYC-FRA in business class to save some miles but there isn't any (only Econ/First). If I try to select Econ then LH-F won't show only Economy. Is there any workaround for this?

@ Neil -- You should be able to fly business class from the US to Europe and first class from Europe to Asia for the US to Asia first class price. Sometimes the computers have a hard time calculating the cost of such a ticket, but it should be possible.

@ DBest -- That would require the ticket to be reissued, and I suspect would trigger a reprice.

@ Matt -- Are you still trying to book first class from Frankfurt to Asia? If so, you won't save any miles for booking business class as far as Europe, since you're charged for the highest cabin you're flying on the itinerary.

While the website shows availability, I can't book it. I've tried twice with phone CSA and no 1st available for all of May. May have to keep looking for FRA LH FCT experience 🙂

So I just called United and they made me call the star alliance desk to book MIA-IAH-FRA-HND. online it shows wide open first but the star alliance desk said that it is all phantom award space and that there are no seats in first FRA-HND in all of August 2014. I didn't ask about other months.

I transferred 110,000 UR points into United to make the booking too. Went from super pumped to super frustrated. bleh

United website showing FRA to HND for 80,000 miles one-way ? How can I bring it down to 67,500 miles ?

lucky its all phantom space man.

Lucky, can you go West Coast US -> Tokyo Haneda -> Frankfurt? I'm not sure if that's valid.

Anyway, it seems like these flights all show availability on United's site but you can't actually book them--I keep getting errors and when you call the agents don't see any availability. ANA doesn't even have the flight loaded into its system yet!

@ Chris -- You can route from the US to Asia via Europe, but not from the US to Europe via Asia.

Darn, phantom space!

What's up with these poorly researched posts?

@ unlucky -- When I posted it was still letting me get to the purchase page.

@lucky, I got to the purchase page too about two hours ago, but it wouldn't allow my purchase to go through. I guess either they caught it really fast or it was phantom in the first place.

phantom space often let's you get to the purchase page. you only know that it's not phantom space once you receive the ticket itself from UA.

So has anyone been able to book and got ticketed? This will pretty amazing for me if it works.

Y'all have been "Lucky-ed."

So this seemed to work for some for a bit and now it is all phantom space? Did UA see the increase in bookings and kill it or was someone still around at LH who saw inventory disappearing?

I tried checking this inventory last night, but it was only showing C inventory and somehow today F became available or at least as phantom space.

I booked and ticketed FRA-HND and NRT-FRA legs last night pacific time, through UA, when I first saw these routes open up.

Wanted HND-FRA on the return (instead of ex-NRT) and UA.com was showing availability, but no one on the phone could ever actually see an O seat on that flight.

defending lucky here. I managed to get both an outbound and return booked from FRA-TYO, so it was available at one point.

This was first posted on FT by armagebedar -- no credit to him?

Lucky, when booking Aeroplan LAX-EUROPE-NRT-LAX, do you have to find flights and then call them to spoon-feed them FLT NO? or can this be bookable online at aeroplan.com with multi-destination?

what a great post for phantom space

@ FTflyer -- The person that brought this to my attention was SMK77, so I tipped the hat to him. Didn't see armagebedar's post about it.

Gone now

I got my seat and booked over the phone with United. Looks like LH corrected their award inventory though.

i don't see any F anymore, but i see J wide open for both FRA and MUC all the way to 9/14

I was successful in confirming O-Class space.

Just tried to book business class on MUC-HND for a date in July via US Airways award ticket. Agent said it's blocked! Thought I'd share that update.

the ua agent didnt see it on his screen so i couldnt book it but seeing first seats hnd-fra on nh223 later in 2014. saw most weekdays in october.

Update: I was originally going to do hnd-fra-jfk so I called the ua desk to reserve it but they didn't see it. However, I was able to reserve just that leg so maybe if you reserve the hnd-fra leg first and call to change the reservation to add on other legs you could take advantage of this opportunity.

Will the new fra-nrt flight still be a single flight number when it changes to fra-kix-nrt? Trying to lock in fra-nrt and wondering if that will affect it.

Will this likely make the fra-kix F space harder to grab now in the future?

@ E -- Doubt it, not that many people booked under this offer.