Introduction

I’ve been working in Japan for the last few months and needed to return to the United States for a week of meetings in mid-June. Normally I’d just let work book my travel home on a U.S. carrier, but having already requalified as AA EXP and UA 1K this year and with a glut of miles from all my cancelled 2020 award bookings it seemed like a good time to sample first class on two of my favorite carriers – ANA and JAL!

For my outbound trip, I had booked multiple Virgin Atlantic ANA F awards last year that I kept extending in hopes Japan would open for tourist travel before I took my current assignment. This ticket was one of them, initially rebooked for just 55k miles routing LAX-HND in March 2022 for sakura season, but I changed it again in May to route NRT-ORD in June 2021 for just an additional 5k VS miles (60k total). My return to Japan was booked in early June using 80k AA miles to fly JFK-HND in JAL F – still one of the best redemption values for AA miles in my opinion (ironically, AA wanted 400k for a DFW-NRT J award on a practically empty flight for the same day – tough decision!). Despite significant frequency reductions to the U.S. by both Japanese carriers, there was ample F award availability for obvious COVID-related reasons.

Having flown only U.S. carriers on long-haul international segments since COVID started over a year ago, I was curious to see how much of the onboard service had been cut in the name of COVID (but in reality, as we all know, for cost-savings). Spoiler alert: there were no cutbacks on ANA or JAL! (aside from the mini-bottles of Krug and pre-wrapped oshibori – two things I think I can live with)

Well, enough with the introduction. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this trip report with sincere hopes that Japan will reopen for tourism by 2022 so everyone can experience firsthand the excellence that both of these carriers offer inflight.