I got my hopes up when I saw DFW JL011 with 4 J seats available. I just need two and am currently booked on the AA 787 flight in J (would prefer JAL for a few reasons, notably the seat). Looks like phantom space because I called in and they could see, but couldn't get it to ticket.

Will keep plugging away. But that was a letdown.

Yes. Simply call AA and feed them the existing PNR and the new route information (flight #). The AAgent will reprice, charge you the new taxes, refund the old ones, and net out the miles. There is no fee to do this regardless of status as long as the origin and destination are the same. It usually goes very smoothly though occasionally there can be issues with the tax refunds and mileage shuffling, so keep an eye on them.

Keep in mind that you can also change routing if it works better as long as the origin and destination don't change. For example, if you saw AA F space JFK-LAX and then JL F space LAX-NRT you could definitely call up and ask for that whole route instead of the direct JFK-NRT flight.

What about after the devaluation? If you book in J now and then F becomes available after 3/22?

Dunno, that's another thread and I haven't paid attention to it because I am not in that situation. OP just asked about whether an upgrade was possible. The amount of miles may vary.

Per OneMileAtATime:

Post-devaluation you can change an award and maintain the price if the award doesn’t require reissue. That means if you’re traveling between the same origin and destination in the same class of service and the same general set of airlines (either American, oneworld partners, or non-oneworld partners), you’ll be able to make a change after the devaluation and preserve the price.

However, if you make any change which requires the award to be reissued, you’ll be charged the new cost, as this will require the old award to be redeposited and the miles to be deducted from your account again.

I wonder if those were mine. I had to give up 2 F LAX-NRT on 11/4 and another 2 F NRT-LAX on 11/19. :(

On that note, is there any discernable pattern with last-minute F availability on JAL? I had to switch to AA's flights (still in F), but would prefer JL for very obvious reasons. I'm hoping to switch back to JL close in if they release space, so it would be good to know what I should expect, if anything.

As posted earlier last night I saw a couple JAL seats out of DFW to NRT so called in to change to that from my ORD-NRT (on AA 787) routing but the agebt couldn't get it to ticket. There had been three seats showing on BA, but went down to one after that call

This afternoon saw three tickets DFW-NRT once again and decided to call in and try again. Easy peasy. Agent rebooked and ticketed in a few minutes.

Just wanted to pass along to anyone running into difficulties as they want to burn AA miles. There is hope and HUCA...even 24 hours between Cs.

I would suggest to keep checking everyday around 5pm et and 8 pm et. I was looking fr 2 F in Nov and luckily 3 opened out of ORD and i wasted no time to grab 2. I would also say Jal website does a gr8 job for checking award space.

If your flights are after March 22nd, and you switch your flights back to JL after March 22nd, you'll likely incur an additional mileage charge as posted above. Unless you have other non-AA flights on the itinerary already (this would make it an "partner" award as opposed to an AA award).

I am confused by the 330 days count.

I checked BA and it says there are 4 seats available on 1/24 (or it's phantom?) TPE-NRT-LAX, but called AA and they said they cannot see any First Class, only Business? She said it's not yet release. Then I asked to check CX and she said she cannot see as well, but BA also shows CX avail...

I'm not seeing any seats for NRT-LAX in F, 330 days out. Just 2 in Biz.

Did you check BA again AFTER your call? it's possible someone beat you to them...

That's possible, cause I just checked and it's no longer there.

Though how is the 330 days count done? Is 1/24 330 days today or 1/25 330 days today? Cause I asked for dates before and after she also said she cannot see...

I think there's a post somewhere saying exactly what time they are available to book thru AA, but I don't have time to go digging for it right now.

I can tell you that I see 1/25 seats for JL J on BA's site right now. I'm guessing she meant there isn't any F showing?

The outbound is actually LAX-NRT (AA) // HND-HIJ (JL) so I should be able to change the LAX-NRT segment to JL if it opens up without any increased mileage. The inbound NRT-LAX is now just the single AA flight, so I'd probably have to pay the additional mileage to switch to JL. But since it's Asia 1 to North America, the increase isn't *that* bad...

Cool. Just wanted to make sure you are aware of that, and weren't going to act out a plan based on assumptions from half-complete info. Sounds like you're on top of it ^