Debonaire

Ah JAL's doing married segments now too? For some reason I thought it was only CX doing that.

I've noticed that QF tends to have issue with more complex itineraries (it wasn't consistently pulling up BOS-ORD-NRT-PEK even when BOS-ORD-NRT and NRT-PEK would show up separately), so what would you recommend? Searching PEK-US gateways like ORD, maybe?

callmedtop

Yeah, JAL has been doing married bookings for at least a few months now, unfortunately. Yes, I would agree that searching PEK-US gateways is the best way to do it. I am actually also flying to Boston as well, so when I grabbed PEK-ORD (which came up as a married segment), I was then able to grab ORD-BOS after-the-fact.

Debonaire

I'd guess the AA agent was happy to merge the JL PEK-NRT-ORD together with the AA ORD-BOS segment, even if the combined itinerary doesn't appear on QF?

Unfortunately searching out of PEK makes the QF calendar (probably the best part of the site) useless as there is always wide-open availability on MU, but I guess there isn't much choice.

callmedtop

Yes, correct on both counts.

I'd suggest trying out Alaska's search as well. It caught all of the married segments results I was finding on QF. Interestingly it did NOT pick up the direct NRT-ORD flight available without married segments, which QF did and I was able to book.

Note that the # of seats appears incorrect. I found a PEK-HND-JFK that had 2 seats available on both QF and Alaska (2 seats, didn't come up when searching for 2 making me think it wasn't phantom), but AA was only able to book 1. After booking the 1 seat they could see, the result disappeared from QF. Alaska's calendar showed it for a couple of hours but eventually also dropped off, suggesting Alaska's results are delayed.

Happy

JL availability can be very fluid on the nearby months. BTW check if you are into the Golden Week(s) peak travel period.

When I checked for April departure from all gateways, I saw some dates at JFK and SFO were wide open (BA did not display how many seats just showed available). 2 days later these were all gone.

Then for a week or so there was hardly anything, all of a sudden I saw a few days out from ORD had as many as 6 J seats and 2F on one day and had J seats on other days though the dates did not work for us.

Eventually I took 2 J seats from JFK out of 4 on Apr 9. It showed 2 available for a few days then suddenly became 6 available. At ticketing I added NRT-ITM to the itinerary with the agent. eTicket came many hours later between 4 and 5am the next morning,

Therefore you just keep checking the gateways that are most convenient to you and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Personally I found JL near months releases are very decent - far far better than those at the opening of the booking window. There is no need, for now, to book a year out. Thank goodness, as our preferences always are the near months. In this case we did not even think about going to Japan until 8 or 9 days ago when we decided to book a 14 days TPAC cruise from Tokyo to Vancouver from last week of April, so we needed the flight to go over,

Debonaire

Thanks callmedtop and Happy for all the advice!

Your anecdotes give me a lot of peace of mind. I was afraid that I had missed some sort of systematic cutoff of sorts, and the seats would be gone for good. Sounds like there is just naturally a lot of unpredictable fluctuation due to award space management, which I can live with. Certainly beats making travel plans a whole year ahead.

Happy

If your planned trip is 2 to 3 months out, just keep checking every other day AFTER JL system overnight update at Japan Time. The availability does change and to the better. The other advantage is AA still allows free date and routing change as long as the O/D remain the same for us below EXP.

AboutTreeFiddy

When you say you were able to grab ORD-BOS after-the-fact, at what point in the process was that? When I was booking ORD-NRT a few weeks ago I called the Singapore number and put 2 F seats on hold. When I called the US number to add the BOS-ORD leg they said they couldn't. So I went ahead and had them book the ORD-NRT segment to make sure I got it. Should I have HUCA? Is it possible to add that leg now without additional miles?

callmedtop

FlyFlyAway33

Are people still having problems with AA seeing JAL award tickets. I recently tried booked an awards flight from Austin to Jakarta on Jun 25th in business class flying DFW-NRT and NRT-CGK. I found the first wing through AA awards and the second wing through BA and alaskan airlines awards seaches. Unfortunately when I called to book the flight the operator could not see the JAL availability so we but my reservation on hold with the JAL wing in economy. I have called back many times and finally found an operator through the AA UK who can see the flight and attempted to add it to my itinerary but said they are unable to do this at this time because JAL puts a priority on new bookings and wont allow them to add awards seats to existing reservations. Unfortunately the DFW-NRT award seat is no longer available and I'm scared to cancel my held itinerary and rebook because I might lose it.

Has anyone come across this? Is there anything I can do?

FlyFlyAway33

Hey, I'm pretty new to this so sorry if this has already been covered and I missed it.
I'm have been having trouble with AA seeing JAL award tickets and more importantly they can't seem to add JAL award tickets to existing itineraries.
I recently tried booking an awards flight from Austin to Jakarta on Jun 25th in business class flying DFW-NRT and NRT-CGK. I found the first wing through AA awards and the second wing through BA and alaskan airlines awards searches. Unfortunately when I called to book the flight the operator could not see the JAL availability (which I could see and still can see through BA and alaskan) so we but my reservation on hold with the JAL wing in economy. I have called back many times (like 8-10) and finally found an operator through the AA UK who can see the flight and attempted to add it to my itinerary but said they are unable to do this at this time because JAL puts a priority on new bookings and wont allow them to add awards seats to existing reservations. Unfortunately the DFW-NRT award seat is no longer available and I'm scared to cancel my held itinerary and rebook because I might lose it.

Has anyone come across this? Is there anything I can do?

Debonaire

Following your advice, I was able to find award space for LGA-ORD-NRT-PEK, though with the ORD-NRT and NRT-PEK segments showing up only separately. The agent was able to book LGA-ORD-NRT, but told me NRT-PEK was "not confirming". It appears that the NRT-PEK space is showing up on BA and AS but not QF. Perhaps phantom space? She ended up placing LGA-ORD-NRT on hold for now.

A few questions:
1. For purposes of determining O/D, do co-terminals count? If I have to depart from JFK instead of LGA, will I have to redeposit the miles?
2. If I want to change say the NRT-PEK segment but not the LGA-ORD-NRT segments, is my current seat on LGA-ORD-NRT sufficient, or does there need to be availability still on that route? (For example if reticketing involves releasing all of my seats then obtaining them again, the seats may disappear and not go directly back into inventory.)
3. Is "not confirming" inventory a common phenomenon? Maybe I should just HUCA and hope the next agent makes it work.

My plan is to search around these next few days for the NRT-PEK segment and get something confirmed, even if it's an undesirable routing (for example, LGA-ORD-NRT-HKG-PEK barely qualifies under maximum permitted mileage). Then I can always come back and change it later. The key is to grab the ORD-NRT space for good.

Thank you all for the good advice!

flyingeph12

For O/D purposes, co-terminals count as separate origins/destinations, so if you change from, e.g., JFK to LGA, that would be a change in origin. I'm not sure why the agent can see the award space but is not able to confirm it. However, I would check not only NRT-PEK but also HND-PEK. The ground transfer would be annoying, and you might have to overnight because of it. But if NRT-PEK opens up later you can always switch. That sort of switch between co-terminals in the middle of an itinerary does not incur a redeposit/change fee.

skimthetrees

Try using the multi-city option on the website to search LGA-NRT / NRT-PEK (one-way). If they are available separately this should find them and allow you to book them as one award (so long as MCT is OK).

Search using TYO to find both NRT and HND availability. LGA-TYO / TYO-PEK.

Gai

Since I've never booked summer JAL travel out of Japan before I thought I'd double check if anyone else had run into this issue: it appears there are literally 0 partner awards tickets in the month of August to get anywhere in the US currently? I'm concerned since when I booked my US-to-JP segment months ago there was a ton of award availability in economy for August return dates so I didn't think much of it and didn't have my itinerary finalized at the time. Now I've been checking for over a month (several times a week) and see no JAL partner award availability at all (LAX/SFO/DTW/ORD/NYC/BOS) all blank and AA operator confirms they can't see any either. Is this normal or do I need to start looking at some more inventive options for my return?