I don’t remember where I read it, but there was an Internet rumor a week or so ago that from 4/2021 on, JAL would restrict F awards to their own program only.

Bill

eta: most bloggers had the rumor on their site around 6/15

For AA's purposes >340 days is meaningless since they cannot book that far out and AA's web search is completely broken for JAL F so do not use it. And, AA's web booking is completely broken as well. One report said they were able to book when calling in. I assume this was with verifying availability with a non AA search. I see quite a few F awards using QF and confirmed with JAL OneWorld search. For example, JFK-HND 6/10/21 has two non-stop flights which each show 2F awards via QF and JL/OneWorld search. If the one poster was correct this should be bookable via phone. It's quite possible you may have to get the agent.to long-sell into Z class for this to book given the sorry state of AA IT.

Hmm I don't see that on Qantas site. I mean maybe all 4 got booked in the last 12 hours since you checked, but no date I'm searching for in June is showing JAL F availability for any route if it's <340 days out when searching for just 1 seat. There is tons of Cathay F availability though for 1 seat, but I need 2 seats as it's for my make-up honeymoon.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...6127cd46bf.png

I'll try booking via phone once the dates I need open up in a few days and hope I get lucky. It's just been frustrating trying to plot everything out and verifying availability. I'll report back then.

Edit: Did some more searching based on sombrachinesca's comment, and looks like I might be out of luck. So frustrating because I had these same F flights for last month but COVID f'd it all up so was trying to do the same for next year. We'll see....
https://onemileatatime.com/japan-air...-class-awards/
https://pointmetotheplane.boardingar...l-first-class/

Edit2: From a comment.. hmmm
"JL is changing the booking class code for award tickets from April 2021 onwards. I work at a oneworld airline and we got a memo from them in late February. This requires us to change our system process and due to covid furloughs this has not been carried out. This is probably why it isn’t working with partner miles so cause for alarm yet."

Interesting.. I just noticed a lot of JAL F space in April and went to book, but get this error:

That said, I just noticed a schedule change for my upcoming September trip. My flight was moved from a Saturday to a Friday when I’m working. Frustratingly, no notification from AA and AA twitter provided no help. So now I have to decide if I want to try and skip out on another day of work before a 4 week vacation, or take a redeye on AA J. :mad:

EDIT: reading through the rest of the post, it makes sense now

To followup with my previous posts, the good news is I was able to book a pair of Japan Airlines first class tickets from HND->JFK with AA miles.

However there is definitely something weird going on, at least compared to last year when I booked these same award flights on the same dates. I figured out how to view an award calendar on the JAL website, and F award availability is wide open >=340 days out. However for all dates <340 days out (which is important since AA only lets you book 331 days out), almost all the availability disappears. The JAL website says they're wait-listed. Meanwhile J awards are still wide-open with all 5 seats available when AA gets access, so this seems to be an F only thing.

There's only a very small handful of days that there is any F awards available that are not wait-listed, and for some reason they're always on Fridays. I found only 4 dates with F awards available between March, April, May, and June, all on a Friday and checking HND to LAX, JFK, ORD, or SFO. Thankfully the lone date in June that had F worked with my schedule, and I was able to snag it. The AA website let me hold it and then a few days later ticket it. So if the award actually exists, AA will let you book it, so I don't think it's an IT issue but that JAL just isn't releasing F awards like they used to. Though AA's website is still f'd up and thinks every date next summer has F availability even though it doesn't actually exist for 98% of those dates and will error out if you try to book it.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...3d40a64e70.png

Now just crossing my fingers I'll actually be able to do this trip a year from now or if COVID will screw things up 2 years in a row. We'll see!

Congratulations on your F booking! That is a great data point.

Can you confirm the AA award booking class for your new JAL F award? Is it still booking Class Z? There was a comment from another poster that implied the booking class may have changed since April 1st so it would be good if we could get confirmation on what it is currently.

I just yesterday got a HND --> ORD JAL F for early April. It shows booking class A on my e-mail.

Now if i could only get *TO* Japan without hopscotching across the country..... The phantom availability is frustrating.

It says First (A) for the JAL leg, and First (U) for the domestic leg.

Also as another data point, JAL flights 331 days out show up at midnight Central on the AA website, but you can't actually book it successfully until about 1:50AM Central time. Calling in won't help and the web will error out when you try to book it before that time. It's been very consistent for that time. Thank god I'm a night owl.

That is very helpful. Thank you both for the information. The A class is a bit of surprise to me since it's obviously only a subset of the full A class inventory in the GDS but in the end it does not matter so long as we have a way to determine what the true bookable A award inventory is.

Thanks for the tip BananaFusion I was able to book 6 weeks in April and May of next year via two one-ways from LAX-HND through the mess of waitlisted days. Both of my booked flights are also booking code A.

My 9/19 JAL F (JL15) flight LAX-HND was rescheduled to 9/18 and switched from a 773 to a 789 with no F so now it's a J flight. Assuming AA won't reimburse me 20k miles, is it worth keeping this at the 80k rate for what's now a JAL J or just rebook to a 60k AA metal J that's available instead? Is JAL J worth 20k over AA J?

I figured out another piece of the puzzle - For <340 days, JAL appears to only release award flights for one day in a month for 24 hours, and then once that day is over, availability opens on the next day and closes for the previous day.

So for instance, a few days ago, all the F award flights available were only on Fridays. So Friday, June 18th, Friday, May 21st, Friday, April 23rd.
The next day though, all the F award flights available were on Saturday. So Saturday, June 19th, Saturday, May 22nd, Saturday, April 24th. But now, none of the previous available Friday dates were available. They all say wait listed.
Today, all the F flights available are on Sundays, again shifted over one day. So Sunday, June 20th, Sunday, May 23rd, Sunday, April 25th. And again, none of the previously available Friday or Saturday dates were available.

The switch appears to happen at midnight Tokyo time, so 10AM central. Also it's not that *every* 777 flight has F availability on those open days, but a lot of them do. So right now Sunday dates just opened up, and tomorrow at 10AM CST then you should be able to book F for Monday, June 21st, while any unbooked Sunday dates will disappear until next month.

Hope this helps someone else out too.

Depends on your priorities. AA has superior seats, more comfortable, roomier and with a lot more storage space for personal items; JL has larger IFE screens. JL has more attentive flight attendants and their food and alcohol selection are infinitely superior to AA's.

I have an upcoming flight in October and probably won't get to go. Is AA will offering free cancellation and reinstatement of miles for award tickets?

When booking AA awards for JL F, it seems to always put any domestic Japanese segment in S (economy). Is this a known issue or does JL not offer any premium (or F) cabin on domestic flights. Or perhaps this is just an aa.com glitch where it doesn’t show domestic F or J?