First question yes

2nd question for partnered carriers yes ANA is now hiding an bit of it's availability till last minute. Is the availability still great for partners? Yes.

No ANA award availability will not change throughout. 3 Tickets in F is 3 tickets in F unless "booked" but who knows.

I've got a similar question looking to book for oct 2016. J availability is extremely limited on ANA booking online and I see 1 maybe 2 available. Can I book Y with points and upgrade to J when I see it available? How much points will it cost me? Currently the different is 17500 pts difference between Y and J on NRT to JFK. Will it be charged 17500 per ticket segment if ANA lets me upgrade?

Also how often do they release J seats on ANA? Im booking directly through ANA with miles.

Nope you can only go down from J to Y and get refunded the difference.

REFUNDS ON ANA IS AN NIGHTMARE*** 3 Months up to. This can only be issued by the Japanese office which takes 2 weeks to respond to you.

If an J seat opens up you need to buy the J seat and cancel the Y seat.

All of this of course can be prevented if you did an "waitlist" but the waitlist will only be good till T-14 which is useless IMO. So from T- (4-14) you are stuck.

ANA's not one of those airlines you can rely on finding last minute seats unless someone cancels. They release all there seats up front with no hidden seats.

My experience with trying to book now and changing it later on ends up not happening. Depends on your route but something like LAX-NRT or LAX-HND is bad on space getting close to departure.

If i do a cancel and rebook changing a economy to business, i'll be charged 3000 points per pax but will i be able to rebook immediately without having to wait 3 months for the points? I imagine I can call in and do this and the penalty will just be 6000 points for 2 pax. I wont have enough points to rebook if I have to wait for the returned points first.

Not sure maybe you can get this question answered for me. BUT I know one thing for sure. If the points take no more than 3 days you'll be ok. NH agents over the phone can HOLD your ticket for you for up to 3 days.

If I've already flown the outbound on a RT. Is it still possible to cancel and get half the miles refunded (minus the 3000miles fee)?

No, since one-way awards are not permitted.

Nope and refunding your taxes will take weeks if not months.

Only the Japan office can issue the refund, the local office in the US cannot.

Hoping someone can help. I'm looking to do EWR-IAD-JNB(stopover)-VFA and return VFA-JNB(stopover)-FRA-ORD. There is availability for my dates. In another thread, it seems that I can do these stopovers (one each per out/inbound). Elsewhere, it seems I can do only one (either out or inbound). Basically, I'm trying to tack on that short VFA trip to my award booking so I don't have to buy a separate ticket.

Second question: if I can do 2 stopovers and/or if I can only do 1 (would then put VFA trip at beginning or end instead of middle), could I change the date of the segments JNB-VFA-JNB if needed? I'd be changing the date not of the out or inbound but of internal segments. Sort of. Hope this makes sense. Will be in J, if that matters.

If I remember correctly you can only do 1 Stop Over.

Thanks. That's what I thought, but I saw in another thread 2 stopovers (maybe it was outdated info). So I can book as follows (dates still in some flux):

Oct 1: EWR-JNB (stopover)
Oct 8: JNB-VFA (final destination)
Oct 12: VFA-ORD (return)

But if I wanted to change the JNB-VFA leg from Oct 8 to Oct 10, would I be able to do that well before outbound departure on Oct 1? My only concern is that, given how far out this is, we might have an itinerary change on that VFA part of the trip. Involves multiple folks meeting up in JNB. So I wouldn't be changing the date of the outbound or inbound, but the internal date of the stopover outbound. Possible?

Changes are free as long as the seats are avail.

Does this apply the same way as partner international award tix? If i want to upgrade 1 leg from Y to J, is it possible with just the points difference of the original and desired tickets?

If this rule doesnt mean the above then what exactly does it mean?

When seats are available in routes for which tickets were issued using mileage for a class higher than the reserved class.

If you made a redemption in business class using the business class level of miles, but one or more segments was in economy, you can "upgrade" to business class at no cost should it become available on that segment.

FYI in case anyone is wondering, my transfer from MR to ANA took about 52 hours.