Back at the end of August, I decided to take a chance on Japan fully opening in the fall. The rates at the Grand Hyatt were incredible so I went ahead and booked Thanksgiving week for a club room. I didn't book airfare then because the border policy was changing and it was still unclear and I couldn't find any award availability for the timeframe we wanted. When news broke a week ago (couple weeks ago?) that the border would be fully reopened in Oct, I started to get serious about booking the air portion of the trip. The cheapest biz class I could find was Singapore Air around 4800 and that has since risen to over 7K today. Zip Air kept popping up in my searches and was only 1600 RT with add ons for baggage for a lie flat biz class seat. It just seemed like to good of a deal to pass up. So I booked it last week and will fly them for the first time on Nov 18th.

For me the priority was / is the seat, not the food / service / alcohol so I'm really hoping that this is a bit of a find / hidden gem. Not sure if anyone has flown Zip Air LAX to NRT in their lie flats yet, would love to hear your experiences if you have. I will certainly report back on how it was for us. But for now, I'm just really excited to get back to a city I love and in time to enjoy the fall colors in Tokyo and Nikko.