Flying ANA from America

Is it wise to book a ticket through ANA from America? I'm looking at a flight that is handled domestically by United Airlines, and then flies to Tokyo through ANA. United says they are out of Economy seats on the flight, but ANA's website still has availability. Will I be in a tough position at the airport if I book through ANA?

Why should you have problems if you booked a valid ticket?
I mean, all airlines overbook, but if you are kicked out depends on so many factors and doesn�ft happen that frequently.

@Likebike is sort of right and sort of wrong.

The ticket is completely valid and it will take you to Japan and the not being able to select seats is not about overbooking. It's an issue with UAL vs. ANA. I booked my flight to Japan that I just returned from last week via UAL and my flights were actually on Hawaiian, ANA, and ANA. They are out of seats because only the middle seats can be booked without additional payment and you can't pay the additional charge for windows and aisles on the UAL ticket.

I know in our case, because it was a single ticketed flight, even though none of our flights was actually on UAL our bags were checked all the way through, so I didn't have to go to baggage claim in Honolulu and could just go straight to our ANA flight to Japan.

The problem with the tickets are:

You have to wait until you check in 24 hours before the flight to get a seat. If the flight appears to not be crowded right now, and continues to not be, at 24 (and I would do exactly 24 hours) you will be able to sit anywhere still open. You will need to create an ANA account and UAL should give you the ANA confirmation code which is not the same as the UAL confirmation code.

If you're just one person, it's not a big deal. In our case, we were two and our flight from Japan back to US was quite fraught because the flight was very full and my tween was freaking out as we didn't have seats together. Luckily, one of the gate agents had mercy on us, and got us two seats together.

The other problem with these tickets will be if you want a special meal. You will have to call up ANA and talk to them to request one. You can't request on line. I spent 45 minutes on hold to request ours from ANA on our flight out, but got my hotel concierge to do it for our flight back. (Though ANA screwed up our special meals and gave us squid, which made me not trust anything else they gave us.)

I'm not going to lie, our overall experience on ANA was somewhat poor (including the special meal issues.) We had a better experience in 2018 with them. This was our first international trip since the pandemic, however we have flown across the US and to Hawaii from the mainland several times since April 2021.

it sound like that code share introduces chaos in international flights.
my understanding was, if it is ANA plane, ANA is preferential. ANA shares some seats to UAL. is that incorrect ?

@ken, ANA shares all seats on their flights which are free with a UAL code share, which means middle seats. If all middle seats are booked, you can't book a seat.

ANA is harder to work with when you are not just doing a straight round trip, or at least they were in my case, I can't speak for the original poster. They would not include my Hawaiian flight within Hawaii and were making my tickets each one way, because I didn't want to go back to Hawaii. This caused them to charge a lot more for the flight from Japan to the US on 1/3. (And no, that wasn't because they were already charging me for the window and aisle seat, that would have still cost additional, it was because they were both one ways, and they wanted for just that leg almost the same amount as the whole round trip on UAL.

It's possible the original poster is flying from say Cleveland, OH to LAX on UAL before getting to LAX and switching to ANA at LAX. And I can 100% see why they don't want two separately ticketed flights.

Honestly, it's pretty frustrating because before airlines went on a cash grab pre-2011 ANA was a lot easier to work and just allowed people on a code share to book seats and special meals. I took codeshares from JFK to NRT with UAL/ANA and ANA just did a much better job.

I honestly found ANA super disappointing and their app and website are not very robust. I can't tell you how many times the website crashed while I tried to check in and I had to keep re-entering all my information again, because nothing was saved.

I'm not planning to use them again, unless they are significantly cheaper than my other options.

I have never had to deal with ANA regarding a code share (and if I did, I'd want the ticket to be UA and the plane to be ANA). But I have taken ANA and they are a top notch airline. Never had a problem with them, and while JAL can do quite well in its service too, most travelers I have met with over the years would pick ANA over JAL. Of course you have to look at things in totality - the airfare, the schedule, etc.