thijsseh

The easiest way is through Expertflyer.
A subscription is U$ 9.99 per month and you could cancel it when you don't need it anymore and reactive for your next trip.
It will give you limitless queries on award availability on many airlines (including EK). And you can set alerts to know when an award become available.
End of EF plug (I don't work for them and am not paid to advertise...)

So I looked up availability on the dates you mention. As you don't say how many seats and in which cabin, I looked for 2 seats in J and in Y.
11/05 DXB/MXP: Availability on all three flights in both J and Y
14/05 MXP/JFK: Only Y availability on EK102
26/05 JFK/DXB: Nothing at the moment.

Of course this may change at any time, up as well as down. This was 5 mini=utes ago.

HKprince

EK102 doesn't operate MXP-JFK. It is only EK205 if I recall correctly.

thijsseh

You are right. I missed the fact that this is a connection suggested by ExpertFlyer. A rather stupid one too: MXP/DXB/JFK

There is currently N bucket (Economy Saver award) availability on EK205 on 14/05. Not sure if N bucket is available to partners? That's something I cant get good info on anywhere.

unicon

As suggested by thijsseh, expertflyer is the best and most convenient option to look up partner award availability on EK. Classes to look for are Z for first, D for Biz and X for economy.

Though I would suggest to call JAL to confirm availability before transferring points, as I did notice a couple of cases where expertflyer was showing different availability than what JAL agent could see.

bmir

Would any kind soul be willing to check award availability for JFK to MXP, business class, four seats, during first week of June (Jun 1 - Jun 7)?

I have just spend a while clicking through Alaska's site and Emirates' own site, not sure if I am seeing discrepancies. Alaska does not seem to show avail whereas emirates does. I will be calling JAL when they open in AM to try to ticket.

Thanks!

ft101

EK site is showing me at least 4 J Flex Plus Award seats on all days except 4th June @ 62,500 miles plus US $548.10 each. 4th June shows nothing available.

stargold

Flex Plus does not work for JAL.

bmir: No Business Saver availability at all for the entire week 1-7 June. Four seats seem very unlikely.

thijsseh

Indeed, no availability for even one "D" (Business saver) seat that week.
My experience is that seats sometimes are made available some 4 days before the flight. For instance: there are 3 D seats available right now on 28/4 on EK206. I agree that 4 seats is very unlikely

ft101

Business Saver does not work for one way reward tickets, so between us we may have uncovered bmir's problem.

stargold

JAL allows one-ways though

bmir

Thank you all. I was indeed looking for a round trip ticket but only had availability mismatch with the outbound leg. After several phone calls with JAL I can say that at least for the dates I was looking at, Alaska consistently had one more seat available in business class than JAL showed over the phone. And Emirates availability to its own members was greater than or equal to Alaska. Hopefully that is a useful datapoint.

I have confirmed 7 of 8 seats of this r/t... now waiting for EK to open up one more business class seat!

maewest

Looking into booking 2 EK seats in J using JAL miles for a wedding in Jan but trying to figure out if this is the right plan of attack and would appreciate any feedback/insight.

Travel dates are slightly flexible as the wedding is in Dubai on 1/18-20 but I was thinking:

Jan 12(flexible +2 days) JFK > MXP (stop for a few days/flexible) > DXB (end 1st leg)
Jan 21 DXB > JFK
GCM puts this at 13,772 mi RT which looks like 85k redemption via JAL partner award

Now, the tricky part is JAL miles - I was thinking of transferring Chase UR points? I think I only need for 2 seats, with the conversion as follows:
1 Chase UR = 1 Marriott = 3 Starwood > 1:1 for JAL w/bonus 5,000 for every 20k points transferred

by that logic I would only need to transfer 47000 UR to get to 2 J tix on EK:
47k Chase UR > 47k Marriott > 141k Starwood > 141k+35kbonus = 176k JAL Partner Award for 2 (88k/ticket)

Does that look/sound correct? Looking to 'check my work' before moving forward with the points transfer as it is more complex than anything I've moved to date. Thank you!

tpsmith82

Well, I am pretty new to this, but I'm pretty sure your conversions are wrong. It's more like
3 UR = 3 Marriott = 1 SPG. So to get 141K SPG points you will need 423K UR points.

Sorry to spoil the plan.

maewest

oof you're right. Thanks for catching that.... back to the drawing board.

paterwdb

Is anyone aware if I book an EK flight in business using JAL points, if at a later date an F seat opens up, can I move the ticket into F and just pay the difference in miles?

I'm looking to fly in a party of 3 in F. It's almost impossible that we'd find 3 seats in F on any flight, but if we can snag two, then we could book one person in J and then move it up to F if one more seat opens.

Anyone had any luck with this?