Originally Posted by
Darlox
Just keep looking... You're too far out for many airlines. Broader award availability will start opening up at about ~330 days on most airlines, so you're not quite a month too soon in most cases, here. Some will be open now, including ANA, but if you're not seeing capacity on the dates you want, you'll just have to wait.
NRT is, in general, a fairly easy market to find awards for. You may have to connect through SFO or somewhere else with higher frequency, rather than taking a nonstop, but I would say that being inflexible with your dates is the bigger concern. But even at that, if you have sufficient points on two different alliances (seems like you have everything except Delta/SkyTeam covered), you should have no problem finding something that works, even if it's a less-than-ideal routing.
Yeah I know the travel days are tricky. Unfortunately for us to travel midweek this particular time, the trip would have to be significantly shorter because we only have a two week window due to work obligations. But I'll keep my eyes open in the weeks ahead with fingers crossed.
Besides the ANA via Virgin Atlantic award, are there any other redemption options outside of SkyTeam I should stay on top of for this route?