I'm having problems in us-east-1c
If you want to figure out which of your AZs corresponds to another account's AZs, you can compare spot-prices, which are individual per AZ. Also, for some reason, my account doesn't have a 'b', just a-c-d-e. Weird.
[0] https://snarkive.lastweekinaws.com/issue_14-_US-East-1_Drops...
[0] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-reg...
I heard that aws actually scrambled availability zones... so your 1a might be my 1c, etc.. Haven't confirmed it, but the comments seem to bear that out.
[0] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-reg...