redtop

It also looks like JL only releases to partners a maximum of 4 award seats in coach per flight. I am wondering if there is a way around this apparent 4 seat per flight limitation. (I haven't searched business availability as much, but it seems to be capped at 2 seats per flight available for partners).

If you search award availability on jal.com, you'll see up to 9 seats available per flight, but I've only seen up to 4 seats available for the same flights on ba.com. I recently called AAdvantage to check availability of coach seats on a JL flight with 9 seats available on jal.com (before ba.com JL searching functionality had returned) and the agent confirmed that only 4 seats were available, and also said that 4 seats are the most she has ever seen available on a JL flight.

As a work-around to this 4-seat per flight limitation, the AAgent suggested placing 4 tickets on hold and seeing if JL will release more. It wasn't clear if she had seen this strategy work reliably in practice or if it was just an idea that had just come to her.

I have noticed that when 4 or fewer seats are available on jal.com for a particular flight, the number reported by ba.com matches that reported by jal.com. I'm hoping this suggests that JL does not have two "buckets" of award seats (one bucket for partners and a separate bucket on for JAL members), but just simply allows JAL members to reserve a greater number of seats at a time. My untested theory is that if one were to ticket or place on hold 4 coach seats on a JL flight using AA miles, the remainder of the award seats viewable on jal.com (capped at 4 at a time) would eventually also be released to partners as being available.

I didn't try the agent's strategy yet since I'm not ready to book, but I'm wondering--does anyone have any experience in this regard? Namely, is it standard practice for JL to release another batch of 4 award seats to partners when the first batch of 4 has already been used up? (Assuming, of course, that another 4 seats is still available to JAL members). If so, how long does it take JAL to release additional seats?