Originally Posted by
guv1976
OK. As you may know, a one-way Business Class partner award from North America to Japan costs exactly 60,000 AA miles. That rate applies whether you're on a JL nonstop, or you fly AA or AS to an intermediate point (like the West Coast) to connect to JL. If you were to book a connection and the JL nonstop opened up shortly before departure, you could hold the JL nonstop, call AA to cancel and refund the original award, and then use the refunded miles to purchase the nonstop award.
Thank you for the information! I already know about the 60k awards on AA - I have enough miles to get them one-way, but not round-trip. Also, availability right now is limited, and seems to only open up 6 weeks before the flight. I did notice some availability for ORD-Tokyo, but would rather not risk it.
Since the cancellation fee for BA is only $50 and you get the BA miles back, I might just book an award flight using my transferable credit card points as I have a combined 410k that can be transferred to BA with Amex/Capital One/Chase. Even if I don't use need Avios immediately (in the event of a refund), I can always reuse them for domestic AA flights, as well as international BA flights. I did enjoy my trip to London and Northern England 2 years ago w/British Airways, and would love to visit either SW England/Wales, Central England, Scotland, or Ireland (w/Aer Lingus) in the next 2-5 years.
I figure even with an overnight hotel stay (which might end up free w/my IHG Premier points/annual certificate and Hilton points) and a Chicago-west coast flight the day before, I can still average over 2 cents/point with Japan Airlines business @ 77k Avios + $230 taxes/fees.