Well, for future prosperity this is what happened, so others can learn. About three hours after my post the scheduled delay was extended to 5 hours, so a definite connection miss (of ~2 hours).
- I tried calling JAL in advance, this was a waste of time: 3 calls on hold for 1 hour plus (looking for English language, if that makes a difference). In the end I got through to the UK (failed on Japan / USA) in under 5 minutes late on Sunday just after another 90 minutes waiting for the US number about 10 minutes after it opened. The agent couldn't help immediately, said she would speak to a supervisor and call me back, which she did. However the answer was: I can't find any available seats or change the ticket, can you try BA (which was pointless as JAL had control of the ticket as I had already checked in online, which she agreed with). Conclusion: Call centres won't do anything
- Checking in at ORD airport (not a premium experience, one queue only for all classes and slow) I asked if there was a ticket desk, told not really and they won't be able to help, however she did give us 30USD each to spend on food so whilst not all restaurants in ORD accept the JAL voucher, we bought starbucks nibbles and ate in the nice lounge. At this point our luggage was tagged to HKG and we were given boarding passes for the flight that was due to leave 2 hours before we landed at NRT. The agent said that they will deal with your missed connection at NRT. I saw a JAL desk in the Flagship lounge. I asked there, told that they also can't do anything, they will deal with it at NRT. Conclusion: At outstations they also can't/won't help
- Once we arrived at NRT there was a lady standing with a sign ready to help us immediately, and very helpful she was: We were given 2000JPY per person for food, had details of our new flight (the next day from HND) and a hotel arranged with a voucher as well. So then taken to the bus stop where there was a JAL specific bus for HND. We were through immigration with our bags and ready to go within 15 minutes thanks to the fast pass and first class bag tags. I am feeling fairly happy at this point. It did however go downhill when we had to wait another 90 minutes on the bus for more and more passengers to arrive. Eventually got to the reasonable HND hotel (in the domestic terminal) around 3 hours after landing. The flight the next morning was uneventful, though the plane wasn't particularly good with regional seating and we had middle seats. I noted that we were booked into the redemption class. Bit of a pain having to go to the domestic terminal as it added 30 minutes onto the journey and there was a hotel in the international terminal too. Conclusion: NRT will help and are well prepared, but it may be inconvenient
In hindsight I wish I had pushed JAL more to connect us at NRT onto Cathay, without the need for a bus transfer - however I presume they were trying to limit costs by keeping us on JAL. If I'd known we would wait on the JAL bus for so long (they kept pushing back the departure time) I would also have gotten straight onto the normal HND transfer bus, rather than the special one put on for us. With the delay overnight our total delay into Hong Kong was about 15 hours.
In conclusion I wasn't overly impressed - both Cathay and BA have dealt with my recent IRROPs far better considering that they are managing 2 oneworld emeralds (wife is also BA Gold), on F/J tickets (sometimes paid, sometimes miles). Maybe I am just too used to everything being fixed before the flight rather than just leaving everything till passengers get to the main hub, but it leaves uncertainty. I didn't then appreciate them putting us onto flights with cheap seats available rather than just rebooking onto any flight with availability that is an easier transit. To anyone else reading this, consider whether you really want to transfer to HND... it's a bit of a pain in the ... and not what you want after a 13 hour flight, even if it was in First. As a consequence I won't be going out of my way to take another JAL flight. So for our next trips to Japan we will stick to Cathay - whilst we really liked the Japanese food menu on JAL it isn't worth the general risk of hassle and I thought the JAL regional seat was equally as bad as Cathay's (ok, maybe marginally better, but the entertainment was far older/worse).