tonto_b

Firstly, thank you all for the good wishes. I'm sure we'll have a great trip regardless of any extra perks I wrangle!
Thanks also for the tips. I hadn't realised what fantastic value business class is when using points+cash. I didn't have enough points at the time I booked, so at least there are no regrets on my part for not doing it then. I just about have enough now though so I called BMI and unfortunately there are no C seats available. I checked the ANA website and confirmed this. In fact there is pretty much no availability outside of F (and even then most are full) on any *A flights to NRT that day. I had no idea it's such a heavily subscribed route*.
So, I'll keep an eye on ANA in case any seats open up.
By the way, I should have asked the BMI lady I spoke to, but I guess I can pre-assign seats through them?

Thanks again.

Tonto.

*Edit: just occurred to me that that's a silly thing to say. I've just been booking some Hilton rewards nights where there are no blackout dates. Of course, the availability I was looking at was for reward redemptions.