littlevoices

Would appreciate any thoughts or advice..

I'm on the JL09 tomorrow (07 January, at least tomorrow on a US timezone) on a one way avios award in first class from ORD-NRT-HKG, all with JAL with two passengers. We were due to connect to the JL735 on the same day (business since no first on the intra-Asia flight)

Unfortunately the plane departure has been seriously delayed, first till 2pm (leaving a 50 minute, still possible, short connection) and now to 4pm. This means an arrival in Tokyo around 8pm,rather than 3pm, so rather a long 5hr delay. I presume this is due to the bad weather in the east coast of the US. We'd really like to return on time on Monday 8th. I do appreciate jal giving a lot of notice (over 24 hours) of the delays mind.

Rerouting options don't seem great, I can see the following options,if we weren't to take our new flight times:
- CX direct, but only one seat in first and two in business. At least this way we'd arrive in Hong Kong on Monday as scheduled. May be the best alternative flight but means no first I presume.
- Take the new flight times and overnight in NRT
- Ask for a reroute on Ana, which is around the same flight time as my original flight... Presumably not really something they'd like.
- Various other rerouting options with oneworld but all of which arrive on Tuesday anyway so aren't a good option.

Before I make the call/go to the airport, wondered if anyone had any advice on these two points :
1. If we do have to overnight will JAL give us a hotel room?
2. How flexible is JAL typically with rerouting, if at all?

At the moment it seems like we have to just miss another day of work and take the original, delayed, flight. Not ideal but may be the best option.

Thanks for any views! Any compensation seems to be a lost cause as far as I can tell so I'll claim on my travel insurance.

Edit : I did try to call, Japan as other offices closed, to get 70 minutes of hold music before I gave up. Tried a lot of different routes meanwhile but didn't find any better availability than my original ones above...