Originally Posted by
keihin_242
BA Forum, I’d like to fly from HND to LHR next summer with my family (4 pax) in business class on award tickets. Dates are flexible.
I have enough AAdvantage miles to book, but AA shows zero business availability on BA or JAL, although all options are available in Y. I am exec plat with AA and will call them for assistance.
However, I also have enough Capital One Venture X points to transfer enough Avios for a redemption directly with BA.
I have never tried to purchase Avios flight rewards, have no status with BA, and am hesitant to transfer that many points to Avios without a better idea of the likelihood of finding awards available.
Can this forum provide any guidance? Specifically, the likelihood of award availability with no BA status, and any dates when BA makes award space available. I’m looking at June-Aug of 2026. Thank you sincerely.
You are based near Tokyo and lots of folks from the UK want to go there, so the return flight back to the UK (for them) are very popular, probably up there with the three most popular routes.
So BA rewards will usually sell out on BA just after midnight as mentioned by others.
You only mention going *to* London, not that you want a return. If you do want a return that provides other difficulties as you generally won't be able to book the outbound and the return at the same time. And booking for 4 you might just try ringing up every night until you are successful, but then you wouldn't know if you were going to be able to get return flights at a convenient interval.
Since you can't put your miles back in your pocket, I would advise not transferring them over en masse. But if you join BAC it will let you search for rewards even if you don't have the miles to book them.
There is no status benefit unless you are Gold Guest List in which case you can use a voucher to book revenue seats.
As mentioned you may be able to find JL flights to elsewhere in Europe more easily than direct to UK. But then you would have to get a connecting flight.