AwardRook21

Hi All,

I just booked Avios J awards on Japan Airlines (JL/JAL) for two of us for Jan. 2024 (JL3 JFK – HND and JL4 HND – JFK return). This was my first Avios partner award booking. I don’t normally book award tickets 355 days out, but I had to lock in the dates in advance due to work. Unfortunately, I need to plan a couple of other non-refundable aspects of this trip right now. As a result, I have a couple of questions and I was hoping FT members could give me some clarity/peace of mind as I am planning my trip around these seats. Also, for anyone that has booked JAL awards via BA Avios, please feel free to chime in with your experiences! My questions are:

1) How reliable are Avios bookings on JL in J-class this far out? Is there a significant risk of flight cancellation or downgrading of our J awards? As of now, we’re booked on JL 777-300 flights which have ample J capacity

2) Do any FTers have any insight as to how seamlessly JL or rather BA will rebook us if our original JL flights are cancelled? Will our confirmed J class booking be honored if rebooking is needed due to JL’s cancellation? I have seen examples on FT of how AA and AS handle this, but have not been able to find any scenarios involving BA.

Thanks in advance for all your help! I am posting this in the BA forum, as opposed to the JAL forum, as the JAL forum moderator said that they often advise members who have cross-over issue posts to post in the forum of the ticketing carrier (my post in the JAL forum was closed).

Calm down dear

I did exactly this last year, BA reward ticket on JL, booked 9 months in advance for Xmas.
JL cancelled the flight to HND and put me on the next day despite other JL flights being available to NRT and another to HND overnight. Called BA who said they could not do anything as “no reward seats”, I persisted and BA escalated to “one world desk”, it took weeks of chasing and…”unless JL open up reward seat, no dice, and they haven’t, so that’s that.” The advice of this Board was thems the rules on partner bookings and actually lucky JL had put me on next day instead of refund.
However as it was an important trip, I got onto JL to explain. They started by saying…sorry you have a BA ticket, you need to call them…after 3 hours and me conferencing in the BA agent did I get my award ticket redone on the original day, albeit to NRT not HND.
So in summary, be aware. It’s not like normal BA where they often open up revenue seats in cases of forced cancellation but it all worked out for me - but took 6 weeks of stress.

corporate-wage-slave

The risk of cancellation or downgrade comes up in this forum far more often than it actually happens, I must admit it's a risk factor that I've managed to keep off my radar, there are various things about travel that worry me but that's not one of them. That said, the pandemic and re-routings caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought more trouble for airlines generally and JAL is certainly not exempt. However in the absence of that, JAL is an utterly reliable airline and I would still have no concerns about your trip. I would, instead, leave it for now. If something did happen, then depending on the exact circumstances I'm sure you would get much more useful advice. Broadly speaking BAEC will do what they can to help, but they are essentially agents here and need JAL to play ball.

AwardRook21

Thanks for chiming in here! This is really helpful to hear. So, worst case scenario, it seems that they would rebook me on a plane the next day. I'm actually okay with that. If I lost a day of this trip it would not be the biggest deal, so this puts me a bit more at ease. When they rebooked you, was it the same fare class? Meaning if I booked J with Avios, and my flight got canceled, would I be rebooked on J? Also, was it BA that notified you of the rebooking, or JAL (and did you need to confirm anything, or was it automatic)?

Last question: So in the event of a cancellation and subsequent rebooking onto a flight I don't want, the process would be to call BA, have them escalate to the One World Desk, and then call JL and beg them to open up award space on another flight and complete the escalation (and pray the do, lol)?

Appreciate all your help here.

Calm down dear

In a nutshell,yes. BA sent me the usual email saying sorry flight cancelled, here is a new one or you can cancel for free. The new one was like for like. If award seats are available I’d have more options on rebooking but if not you have to ask BA etc. To further put your mind at rest I found JL here in London very eager to help once I got hold of them.

AwardRook21

Got it, thanks for the additional detail here. Hopefully, if it comes to it, they are as helpful in North America as they were in the UK! Looks like I'll sit tight for now and hope there are no changes.