Given that he already paid in miles for the F award and is seated in F on another leg, I do not believe a change fee would apply to move him up from Y to C or F on NRT-LAX.... He just has to have Skype on his phone and an Internet connection to call the AS partner desk from Tokyo. And as someone else noted, he should not do online checkin.

That's my assumption, but I want to confirm with folks here who have more recent experience with AS awards than I do

Thanks!