Strategy for booking JL in J with Avios?
 

I have been very successful in booking our flights on BA to Europe and on Qantas to Australia, always in J, using Avios. My strategy is to book the day and hour the seats are released----355-365 days in advance for those two airlines.

Now in the early stages of planning a trip to Japan, starting at either LAX or SFO. I have not been able to figure out when JL first releases their J award seats to OneWorld partners like BA. That is, I cannot find any at all, whether I look 355 or 330 days out. And the BA website does not offer an availability calendar for the JL flights (like it does for BA flights).

From reading the JL forum, it appears that the airline tends to release a number of J and maybe F seats very close to the travel date, like a week or two ahead. That will not work for us at all.

Does anyone when (or if) the award seats are originally released? Is there a better way to get them, such as calling BAEC instead of booking online?

This question is best asked on JL forum as the availability/seat release timing is up to JL and nothing to do with BAEC.

For that routing, calling BA or looking it up on BA website won't make any difference (it's not one of the routes that online search fails due to the route not being recognised) so no point in calling BA to check for availability. If the availability is there, it will show on the online search you do on BAEC. You may need to search for individual dates.


[mod hat on]
I am going to close the thread so that you can ask the question afresh on the JL section without getting caught in 'duplicate post' issues.

I recommend re-writing the question so that it's more tailored to the JL forum (e.g. removing reference to calling BAEC to ask about availability) and posting there.

[/mod hat off]