I just purchased two (2) Sky Suite seats in F on a long haul flight from New York to Tokyo with FF miles. Seat availability wasn't available at the time of booking because I wasn't booking my tickets on the Japan Airlines website. After I booked my tickets and received a Japan Airlines confirmation number, I logged onto the Japan Airlines website to assign my seats, I realized that the two seats I booked were the last two available and they aren't together. There are 8 seats in this First Class Cabin, in a two row 1-2-1 configuration. The middle two rows have one seat taken in 1G and one seat taken in 2D. Since both of these seats are middle aisle seats, it doesn't appear that 1G would be inconvenienced by moving to 2G nor 2D moving down to 1D.

I thought about arriving very early to the airport to ask the Japan Airlines representative checking in the first class cabin if they would mention something to one of these passengers about my situation.

Of course, I have no problem asking the passengers in one of those seats if they wouldn't mind moving once we boarded the aircraft but was wondering if this would be okay. This is my first trip to Japan and I don't want to insult anyone or make anyone (the passenger or the flight attendants) feel insulted or uncomfortable. The last thing I want to be perceived as is a rude/demanding foreigner. Any advice would be appreciated.

I was asked to change seats a few weeks ago LHR-HND in F, I was alone in 1D. It was a full cabin. There were two Japanese pax in 1A and 2A who wanted to sit adjacent to each other, so they asked me to swap my 1D for their 2A. I was delighted, as I prefer a window seat. They were delighted as they could sit next to each other. Lots of reciprocated bowing later, we were all happy.

The difference in my case is that all parties were benefitting. I am sure the other pax in the middle seats chose those seats to maximise the chance of not having someone next to them. In this case, I can’t see either single pax benefitting themselves, so it might be a harder sell. There’s not really any material benefit in my experience between row 1 or row 2 on JAL F. Perhaps row 1 is slightly better if you want to be served a minute or two before row 2, and possibly you get off first assuming a jet bridge comes to 1L (it’s not always). Equally row 1 suffers slightly more traffic than row 2.

In my situation, although the couple who wanted to sit next to each other couldn’t speak English, and my Japanese is probably worse than that (!) it was clear to me what they wanted. You could always ask crew to help translate.

One point to mention, I would board as soon as you can before the other pax get settled, they’re less likely to want to move once they’ve settled and decanted their stuff into the various storage and cubby holes.

not for me and you can slide your seat forward too