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name: ana-award description: Search ANA Mileage Club international award flights (miles, taxes, seats per itinerary) from the command line with the user's own logged-in account, instead of ANA's website. Use for ANA / Star Alliance award availability or price questions.

ANA award search

ana_award.py (next to this file) queries ANA's international award booking site (aswbe-i.ana.co.jp/international_asw) over plain HTTP as the user's own ANA Mileage Club account and prints the bookable itineraries with miles, cash taxes and seats. It needs macOS, Chrome, and uv.

./ana_award.py SZX,HKG TYO 2026-12-01 2026-12-15 --cabin Y,J
./ana_award.py HND SFO 2027-03-02 --cabin J --json     # one-way, full data

Origins and cabins are comma-separated and searched one after another; the destination is a single IATA airport or city code (TYO, OSA, SEL cover all airports of the city). Cabins: Y, PY, J, F. Omit the return date for one-way. The markdown table lists the cheapest --limit outbound × return combinations; --json returns every flight and combination.

Reading the output

• Miles is the total for the whole itinerary per adult; Tax is the cash part in JPY.
• Award is the chart the itinerary prices on: ANA (ANA-operated only, waitlist allowed) or Star Alliance (any partner segment; no waitlist). An all-ANA itinerary usually appears under both.
• Seats is ANA's own counter per direction, capped at 9. WL marks a waitlist-only combination.
• "No award space returned … E_A01P01_0007" means the cabin does not exist or has no award inventory on that route and date. It is ANA's answer, not a tool failure. Premium Economy only exists on long-haul.
• ANA releases award seats 355 days out; the site accepts dates up to 356 days ahead.

Login

No credentials go on the command line. The tool reads ana.co.jp cookies from the user's Chrome profile (one Keychain read of "Chrome Safe Storage"; ANA_CHROME_PROFILE selects a profile other than Default), so the user must already be signed in to ana.co.jp in Chrome. ANA's booking app then asks for the password again for every new session; the tool supplies it from ANA_PASSWORD, or from the 1Password item named by ANA_OP_ITEM (default ANA, optional ANA_OP_VAULT) via op. The working session is cached in ~/.cache/ana-award/session.json (0600). ANA's backend session dies after about 10 idle minutes, so re-login on each run is normal. --fresh re-reads Chrome's cookies; use it after "not logged in" or a throttle.

The password step is attempted exactly once per run. Never wrap the tool in a retry loop: repeated bad passwords lock the mileage account.

Akamai throttling

The site sits behind Akamai Bot Manager. Chrome's TLS fingerprint (curl_cffi) plus Chrome's cookies get through, but a burst of searches (observed: roughly ten logins and searches within 15 minutes) makes Akamai tarpit the search POST: it hangs with no response. The tool then exits with "Akamai is throttling". Stop, wait at least 30 minutes, and keep the default --pace between searches. Plan queries so a session stays within a handful of searches; do not scan a month day by day. This is a personal convenience for one's own account at human volume, not a scraper.

Booking

The tool stops at search. Redeeming miles is irreversible spending on the user's account: do it only on their explicit request for a specific itinerary, and confirm flights, passengers, miles and taxes with them before the final submit. The remaining steps (select flights → passenger information → payment) are not implemented; the form protocol they would extend is in reference.md.