Definitive "Booking Japan Airlines (JL) Using AS Miles" Thread (2020-2022)
 

A fresh start for this popular thread.

The earlier thread can be found here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...9-earlier.html

award ticket booked
SFO-SAN in Y
SAN-NRT in J.

See first class available today for the 1st flight, and called to make the change.
The agent insisted to charge me $125 change fee.

How others happened to waive the fee?

Inventory goes quickly or is fickle. Was looking for NRT-LAX in F for Jan 10-12, saw it show up, called in and it was gone already :(

HUACA or ask for a supervisor. You've already paid for award First on the connecting AS flight with your partner Business award.

Flights from MNL-HND are absolutely brutal. Usually only the 11:45pm flight is available for redemption, arriving HND at 4:50am. Ouch!

Booked one F HND-SFO for Jan 12 ~one hour ago. I noticed that JL tends to release seats to AS early morning Japan time.

Been looking like crazy for Feb F flights but I guess I'll have to wait on those.

Closer to about 2 weeks away from departure gives better chance

I'm not sure if this is JL specific or if it applies to all AS awards, but is there any information about routing rules? There's nothing in the wiki about it

In particular I want to know how much backtracking is allowed domestically. And, does that change on a stopover vs connection? I'm based in SFO -- I know that I've seen SFO-ORD-TYO show up as an allowed routing. But could I do SFO-ORD (stopover) ORD-TYO? Or SFO-NYC (stop) NYC-TYO?

Basically I want to do a trip where Tokyo is the end of my award, but I don't want to "waste" the stopover, so I want to use it domestically.

Another option is to fly to NY at an earlier date, and then do NYC-SFO (long stopover) SFO-TYO. But then I'm paying for the first one-way.

it can be booked online. You can stop over at JFK https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ac479afcf.jpeg

Oh nice. I was having trouble getting it to show up.

So are there rules about backtracking domestically? I guess not because that's about the biggest possible backtrack?

Not exactly, becauee they change based on carrier. You can book backtracks online with JL that won’t work with CX, SFO-JFK(stop)-HKG won’t work as a CX award.

Does Alaska not get all of JL's premium availability (or gets premium seats later than economy?)

There are a few Business / First seats I'm looking at in Mid-December that show on AA, fall within the Alaska booking window, but the J/F seats don't show as available. In some cases, the flights don't load at all, in some cases, only the economy seats show.

Your question does not have a simple answer. It is pretty much answered in the 2019 thread.

The simple answer is no, Alaska does not not get all of JL's premium availability. IOW, they do have access to it but they hide it sometimes and make it difficult or impossible to book. I am pretty sure you are searching for flights within the first 5-6 days of schedule open, right? This is where you will see issues like you desribe. Outside that limited window AS mostly has access to everything AA does with the caveat that schedule caching may temporarily block it.

Within the first 5 days of schedule open you can try using the calendar trick which sometimes show more options. For example, NYC-TYO on 12/9 shows only economy with a regular search. Using the calendar trick Business and First also show.

Does JAL still open up last minute F awards? Looking at the next 2 weeks, pickings seem pretty scarce.