Originally Posted by Goosh

Here is the definitive guide to booking JL award flights using partner miles such as AA and BA. And yes, you are doing something wrong, but only because you don't know all the details and intricacies of booking JL awards.

Flights load into inventory 330 days out at 10am Japan Standard Time or 6pm Pacific Daylight Time (to the second). Revenue inventory and award inventory load at the same time. I can only speak to the JL 61 (LAX-NRT), 62 (NRT-LAX) and JL 1 (SFO-HND), 2 (HND-SFO) since those are the only routes I look at, but I expect other routes to be similar. JL 61, 62 loads 2 F and 2 J seats while JL 1, 2 loads 2 F and at least 4 J seats. What's crazy is that the award seats are available to partner redemption online before they are available online to JMB members. What I mean by this is that while the award seats are available to partners online at 6pm PDT, they aren't available to JMB members online until the next day at around 10:30am PDT. I do not know for sure if you are able to book the seats as soon as they load using JL miles by calling JL, but you definitely can't do it online.

Like others above have said, The best way to check award inventory is the BA site. The info on BA is real time while others above have mentioned that the calendar view on the JL site is only updated once a day around 10:30am PDT (timing varies widely day by day...can be anywhere from 9am PDT to 12pm PDT). The real time inventory on the JL site is only available when looking at specific dates.

The fastest way to get awards that I know of is to use the BA site and book directly through BA using Avios since everything can be done online. The pro to that is that you'll probably beat anyone trying to use AA miles, the con is that you'll have to pay fuel surcharges. If you are using AA miles, you need to anticipate the awards loading into the system at 6pm PDT and time your call with AA to coincide with 6pm since you can't book JL awards online through AA. The pro is that there are no fuel surcharges, the con is that your wait time to talk to a CSR is variable.

All of the above is only for booking JL awards 330 days in advance. The award inventory is usually available for about 3 months, then it goes away. After that, award inventory is very sporadic especially for popular routes like LAX-NRT and vice versa. The only thing to do is check everyday. Inventory does tend to open up close to departure. They will usually release award seats for any remaining seats except for one. If inventory is showing F3 the day before departure, they will usually have 2 seats available for redemption. I have never seen them release the very last seat.

I hope that helps you out.