armagebedar

Essentially all fares are upgradeable to Premium Class by paying the same-day, space-available upgrade fee.

Because availability changes from moment to moment. On trunk routes especially, most Premium Class fares are changeable without fees so availability fluctuates right up until departure.

SparseFlyer

Weird, because right before check in I was looking at expertflyer which showed F4 and 6 empty seats.

I asked the agent, and she said F is full. I then took my bag, walked up to the Premium Class check-in, asked if I could upgrade and the ticket agent said ok and wrote down the price for me.

I started to think maybe not all check-in counters/agents are the same.

intuition

Indeed they were. So it seems we can make a mental note that the experience japan fare follows the rythm of tabiwari.

lunastorm

You will only get basic mileage * 1.5 (Premium class) * 2 (Domestic) premium points

The rule is stated here:
https://www.ana.co.jp/wws/tw/e/asw_c...tnm_point.html

See section 3. Boarding Points second note

Since experience japan fare is not eligible for boarding points, you will not get the 400 boarding points even after you upgraded to premium class.

pbd456

debating if i should upgrade CTS OKA for my run.. i dont need the status miles as i am 1350 miles away from keeping my A3 gold.

SparseFlyer

I'd do it.

Ą9,000 was worth it for me. ANA service is just so good. Maybe even more so as a foreigner on a domestic flight as the FAs in pseudo-F find our quirks amusing and work a touch harder to make sure our flight is pleasant.

The lounge at FUK was so bad though.

Maybe I wouldn't upgrade a mid afternoon flight though (premium sebo or something). The Premium Gozen flights are better.

Dan1113

Do we expect the EJ fare to be extended beyond the end of March anytime soon?

I am waiting for this but starting to get very nervous as it is only three months away until I travel and I tend to arrange my flights way more in advance than this haha.

Dan1113

All Tabiwari flights are now on sale through to October for non-members, but Experience Japan has not been updated beyond March.

SparseFlyer

http://www.ana.co.jp/wws/ca/e/wws_co...experience_jp/

fimo

Does ANA honor higher flight baggage allowances if we're going to be transferring to/from international flights especially *A (and also *G status)? I tried to find this (and search here) but wasn't too successful.

stephem

I have some F awards on ANA later in march (SFO-NRT-SFO) for my wife and I and we are thinking of using the Experience Japan fare to visit Sapporo (some late season runs at Niseko) after we spend a few days in Tokyo. We are planning to do HND-CTS but it would be more convenient to return to Narita and just connect to our NH8 flight home to the US. NH2154 arrives in NRT at 3:45pm and NH8 departs at 5:10pm, does anyone know what NH(domestic) to NH (intl) MCT is for Narita?

Also, I am mostly a OW flyer and they tend to do a nice job protecting on separate tickets in situations like this, in the case one of their flights is delayed and causes you to miss another of their flights. Is NH similar or do I need to build in a bigger buffer well beyond MCT?

AlwaysAisle

Minimum connection time at NRT for domestic ANA to international ANA is 45 minutes. You should able to through check your baggage CTS-NRT-SFO, since it will be all ANA flights. Upon arrival at NRT on ANA domestic flight, there is dedicated security area for international connecting passengers which take you to dedicated passport control, which is separate from main passport control for NRT departing passengers.

Security and passport control at Japanese airports are usually very efficient. Unless you are traveling during major Japanese holidays, time to get through security and passport control at Japanese airports should be minimum. Again, you connection at NRT should be fine unless our travel is during major Japanese holiday. You have mentioned your travel is later in March. Lately visiting Japan during cherry blossom season has become very popular among non-Japanese tourist, which is in late March through early April. NRT is noticeably busier during that time compare with other time, but I do not expect busy like Golden Week during May. In case of missing flight at NRT, ANA should be good about that. However, you have F award and ANA’s 777-300 has only 8 F seats. With you traveling with your wife, getting two F seats on next day’s flight may not come easy.

But any case, you will not have time to enjoy ANA F lounge at NRT.

AlwaysAisle

I can only speak from my own experience.

If you are traveling under one ticket, then your international baggage allowance should apply on domestic Japan segment.

If you are traveling on separate tickets such as domestic Japan portion is on Visit Japan fare, etc. then lately I have experienced that ANA is getting strict on following the rule. Up till few years ago my experience was that when flying domestic Japan route on Visit Japan fare, etc. then check-in agents were pretty lenient about check baggage, since international flights have more baggage allowance than domestic Japan flights.

However, lately I have experiencing check-in agents are more and more strictly following the rule. When traveling using Visit Japan fare, etc. then you international and domestic flights are on two separate tickets. Domestic flights have domestic Japan baggage allowance and enforcing it.

My travel on last November was little different. After arrival at NRT I took Limousine Bus to HND to catch ANA domestic flight which was on Visit Japan or Experience Japan (I forgot which) but my domestic ANA flight out of HND was separate from my international flight. I got to HND little early and saw that there was earlier flight which was departing in 35 minutes. Went to check-in counter and asked if I can switch to earlier flight. The agent looked up my reservation and checked if reservation change was allowed, the agent confirmed it was possible, then quickly changed my reservation, issued boarding pass, and tagged my luggage. Did not say anything about baggage allowance, where I had two luggage. I think this was more to do with it was very tight, almost 30 minutes till departure and the check-in agent did not want to bother with my baggage allowance rule of transferring form international flight within 24 hrs., domestic ticket was separate from international ticket, etc.

stephem

Thanks, for the insight. We have been through NRT many times, so familiar with the process (mostly NW-NW or DL-DL connections though) and that it is very efficient. In the end I think I'd rather have all morning to drive down from Niseko at a leisurely pace as opposed to going in the morning CTS-HND and having to schlep out to NRT just for the sake of the F lounge ;-)

SparseFlyer

Worse case, since you have OW status, you could just book a ticket on JAL and have piece of mind https://www.jal.co.jp/yokosojapan/

I don't know schedules by heart, but since NRT is not the airport for domestic flights, the (very few) domestic flights departing from there seem to be timed specifically for International connections, so I don't think I would be too worried.


Also, do note that, IIRC, these flights are operated by ANA Wings, and I have seem many flights with Y only 783s.


Additionally, you can upgrade at the gate for 8,500 JPY, which will give you the F perks.