Definitive "Booking Japan Airlines (JL) Using AS Miles" Thread - 2019 and Earlier
 

Here we go... please add to the wiki above.

This is the current award chart:

From my limited experience booking an AA award on JL this year, F seats open up liberally close in, a week or two out from departure. This seems to hold true as there seems to be lots of award space in December/January in premium cabins. Not so much other times of the year.

I have a fair amount of experience with JL J and F booking and this is what I've found.

1-2 F seats are sometimes made available at T-331. They then will sporadically appear throughout the rest of the cycle (never seems to be rhyme or reason). At T-14ish, you can often typically the # of revenue F seats available = (F award seats available - 1) but moving to equal within T-3. In all practically this means you can snag 2 seats on at least 1-2 US routes within T-7.

J follows a similar pattern except there are often far more J seats available and they make them all available (its not unusual to see 3-6 available).

It's very similar to CX except with more F and J seats to sell and therefore greater chance of finding multiple seats if you are needing 2-3 seats.

Just randomly looking around I noticed AA First (which I know is no comparison to JL First) available for only 2,500 more miles than JL business awards....I love the fact that JL has such great (relatively speaking) availability, but I'll still take the time to check ba.com for CX availability before resorting to JL since 10K miles is enough of a difference to make it worth the extra effort...especially if you're going to HKG which actually costs more than 60K on JL.

Just booked PDX-SFO-HND(stopover)-GMP in Sept. Could not be happier about getting F to Tokyo. Only bummer is that it seems (based on others posts in another thread) is that within Asia your looking at flights that only have J(with a couple of exceptions). Looks like to try the F lounge in HND I will have to fly F back ;).

Also I've never been able to get J for intra-Japan, only Y (true for NH too). It's Y only and you can buy Class J (think Delta C+) for ~$8-10 and to domestic F for some amount I can't recall (never done it - but I always do Class J at the lounge or at check-in).

How is the intra-Japan J product? I'm seeing that cabin as 5 across on the 737s, which doesn't seem like it's worth much.

For the true AS feel, though, they've got all-coach Q400s - but with one fewer row than Horizon's, so you can really stretch out into that one extra inch!

Never mind I lied, I swore it said J but booking shows Y

Forgot about that. I did an ITM-NRT in Y as part of an F award, and no, AA would not book F or J for this flight. I was able to select a PE seat which was fine for that stage length. It was offered to pay to upgrade to a J seat (F ones were filled already- checked via EF) but didn't care to for the short flight. And I couldn't keep Bob so I was a bit disgruntled.

Same rules against backtracking to gateways on JL awards as other partners? Looking at routing through ORD or JFK for a trip next year.

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Good Biz class availability
 

Booked 3 Biz class seats last month for April during Cherry Blossoms season using miles. Coming from the west coast and flying through Vancouver or San Diego had lots of Biz class options. Finding 3 seats r/t wasn't too difficult, which is next to impossible on other airlines.

Edit: my trip is an open jaw flying into Tokyo and out of Osaka.

So, my CGK-NRT-DEL was downgraded from F to J (in March). Is it worth it to still fly that route in J for 25k or should I just ask AS to refund the whole thing and fly a more normal routing?

These are the easiest J seats to get since they are not the most desirable type.

Personally, if I could do SE Asia-Tokyo(stop)-India for only 25k in business with a good product as part of a vacation, I'd do it. Two Asian longhaul J flights for 25k, at the same cost as a round-trip saver in the USA? Sure. When combined with other AS partner redemptions, you could do something like this:

USA-PEK(stop)-SE Asia(stop, destination) HU
SE Asia-TYO(stop)-DEL(stop, destination) JL
DEL-HKG(stop)-USA CX

In J that would run you 125k AS miles and net you FOUR Asian destinations + India for as long as you would like (though the HU flights would incur significant YQ). You could also vary the itinerary and do some shorthaul LCCs for flights and end up exploring places like CMB, PEN, REP, USM and so on.

IMO, it doesn't make as much sense as a routing from Jakarta to India in one day, though, if you aren't taking the Tokyo stop. That being said CGK-DEL is a longhaul flight. I guess it would depend on how you value time vs. comfort on the plane?

They're sure a lot more desirable than coach seats for 10+ hour flights though.