Originally Posted by Dazed and Confused

Hi, my wife and I will be heading to Japan and Micronesia at the beginning of August for an extended holiday and I was hoping for some advice.

Our plan at the moment is to leave the UK on the 8
th
of August and return around the 1
st
November, so far the cheapest business class flights I’ve been able to find are with a combination of BA and JAL costing around £2,800 with the following itinerary.

AMS – LHR – BA – 8
th
Aug
LHR – HND – JAL – 8
th
Aug
HND – OKA – JAL – 9
th
Aug
NRT – LHR – BA – 1
st
November
LHR – DUS - BA – 1st November
=£1,848 (440 tier points)

HND – GUM – Separate Ticket – JAL – around 19th September
GUM – HND – Separate Ticket – JAL – around 30th October
=£932 (80 tier points)

Does this seem like a reasonable price? Happy to continue to search if there’s likely to be something cheaper / better out there?

From Okinawa we’re probably going to fly to Fukuoka and then use a combination of flying and trains to go to Kogashima, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Osaka, Sapporo and finally Tokyo. I believe JAL do a Japan Explorer Pass or a oneworld Visit Japan Fare that would work for us for the flights as we’ll be entering the country on a oneworld airline. Does anyone have any experience of these type of passes and whether they are worth it?


Additionally I’d like to maximise the amount of Tier Points that we get from this trip as I need to earn 680 points before my year end expires in early December to make gold, I think the above itinerary would get me 520 tier points, so another 160 to go from a combination of the AMS / DUS flights from / to London and whatever flights we use with JAL in Japan, does this seem doable?


Apologise for all the questions but thanks in advance for any help.