Odds of getting off waitlist? and other ANA questions
I'm looking at taking my first trip to Japan in October, and while I'm super excited, I, like so many others, seem to be having an incredibly tough time finding award availability. I'm not necessarily tied to one specific product but given the long flight from New York would really prefer to be in Business or First. I'm currently sitting on ~120k MR, ~100k Capital One Miles, and ~60k TYP so ideally would like to book through Virgin, but I think could do business by transferring MR. I've set up alerts through ExpertFlyer but was wondering if availability is any better directly through the ANA website. If so, what are the chances of getting off of the waitlist?
The other option of course is to fly into / out of different airports. I figured that Tokyo would have the best award availability but maybe that isn't the case? Or maybe another airport in the US? I don't need to leave from New York, but would want the airport to be fairly close to minimize any chance of delays causing me to miss the flight to Japan.