dpakman91

I'm looking to go Boston to Tokyo in biz in May, June, or even July and have a few questions based on my initial search on AA.com:

1. There is terrible availability for Milesaaver for this route on AA metal. If it is ever available, it's with two layovers, stuff like BOS-LGA-ORD-NRT, etc. How might I check availability for partner airlines on this route, particularly the nonstop JAL flight BOS-NRT? Is that a flight you can ever get a good miles rate on? Are there airlines other then JAL that might have availability that I can't see on an AA.com search?

2. If I want to try buying an economy fair and doing something like the $350+25k miles upgrade that I did over the summer for BOS-EZE, can those upgrades be available for BOS-Tokyo? If so, what do they tend to cost in terms of dollars plus miles?

Any other suggestions for this route short of paying $6500 per passenger or over 100k miles per passenger each way?

3Cforme

Make a phone call to AA Reservations. The carriers that are bookable at aa.com for awards are listed. It is a minority of AAdvantage-earning carriers.

platbrownguy

Alaska's search engine works great. Click "use miles" and you can see JL's availability by the week. Looks like there's a seat in J every day from now through Tuesday on the JL nonstop BOS-NRT. Keep in mind AS's redemption rates are different than AA's but IME if you see a seat on AS, it's available w/ AA miles too.


You can pick your airline etc.

You can also use the "Award Calendar" feature and search by month. If you're flexible within your months, there's availability now. Of course the best availability is within a week or two of departure, so long as seats remain available.

arlflyer

Creating a free British Airways Executive Club login and using the award search on BA.com is the most straightforward manner, and has served many of us well for booking JL awards in the past.


I just took a cursory look, using BA.com, at dates during the wide window you mention and there does appear to be availability, albeit sparse, in J on this route.


Not really. You could fly CX to HKG and then head up to Tokyo, but that would be 2 awards since they are in different Asia regions and you can't do it that way on a single award. You could go the "long way" with BA or some combination of BA/JL (or something weirder I guess) but that would be obviously a lot of miles and a lot of fees.


Per the upgrade chart here (https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...with-miles.jsp), yes, the miles + copay upgrade rates would be the same as to deep South America.


Seeing RT cash fares on AC around $3k flat in those months if that's your thing.

Duke787

Check the JL PE fare - it can be a very small premium over economy (which is crazy because it is a better seat and comes with lounge access on both ends - but I just did this to get PE on RDU - ORD - NRT - SYD when all the LAX/SFO - SYD flights were virtually sold out since I was booking 3 days ahead of time) and looks like it would come out at about $2k/person vs. $1.95k for Y on JAL or AA for random dates next year.

If you have SPG, you can also upgrade to J on JAL flight #s for a reasonable amount of miles as long as you are in the right fare classes (the PE fare classes qualify but I didn't have enough lead time because the SPG --_> JL transfer is a slow one). That chart is here and my understanding is if BA/AS show the seats available for a J award on your flight on the day in question, you can confirm the upgrade on the spot: https://www.jal.co.jp/en/jalmile/use/jal/upgrade/

Also note that PE on JL booked with JL flight numbers earns EQD at 20% of flight distance, 150% EQMs, and 100% RDMs so if my numbers are right you should end up with $2681 EQD, 20106 EQMs, and 13404 RDMs from booking into E (lowest PE fare class) on JL

Head

I see this suggested often, but it always just shows me routes through LHR. I must be doing something wrong.

Duke787

If it's showing you routes through LHR the space is likely not available. You also have to mostly search point to point (e.g., BOS - NRT, DFW - NRT, ORD - NRT) and then sort out connections on the back end.

arlflyer

That is correct. BA will only populate results if the availability exists. Otherwise there is just nothing. Agree 100% that best practice is to start with the overwater partner segment and work back from there, searching out and adding in the connecting flights. In my experience, anything with 3 legs or more, no way BA is going to find it in one shot. It's usually OK with 2-leg journeys, though it does often miss some things such as coterminal airports (the most commonly useful for me being JFK/LGA, which is a pain for sure but easier than buying another flight when nothing is available out of JFK connecting to/from the international leg).