Where do I find the good fares between North America and China (and v.v.)?
 

I got the impression that JL didn't really try to compete in the connecting market between North America and China like most Star Alliance carriers do (I just switched)... however I'm on JL3 right now JFK-NRT and it's packed full of Chinese passengers, presumably connecting at NRT. AA publishes good fares to and from PVG/PEK, but on their own metal direct to the US, not JL via TYO... so where do I find these JL marketed fares? Is there some consolidator or other agency that sells them?

This has always been a sore spot for me, both NH and JL don't promote the cheap fares to/from China in the GDS and at least in the case of NH exclude China from the JV, so I don't know where to find them, but as many Asia based travelers know, PVG/PEK long haul fares are quite often by far the cheapest in the region by hundreds of dollars if not a full thousand dollars (ex-TYO gets raked over the coals badly.).

Happy to hear some advice on where to find cheap JL fares to North and South America ex-China.

it's highly unlikely that you find much cheaper fares than those you find in GDS besides small discounts some OTAs offer.

Are you talking about J or Y?

I don't think there are. Maybe cause the flights are already packed full of Chinese they don't need to offer discounted fares.

Business class or economy class?
two totally different markets.

That flight was economy. I also noticed a significant portion of the cabin attendants were Chinese. It's something that they are apparently prepared for which leads me to think they are selling competitive fares between China and New York somewhere or else I'm sure those passengers would be flying a carrier like UA or a Chinese carrier that goes direct and does offer $300-500 round trip fares in that market. Not too many people are going to pay double to fly JL on a connection. So, I thought there must be a consolidator on one side or the other offering much cheaper fares than JL publishes. (or in some cases, major Chinese cities with no published fare at all from JL connecting to the US)

There is no reason to offer unnecessarily cheap fares when they can fill seats without doing so. I believe there are enough of profitable passengers like those traveling between Japan and US and the rest of the passengers who are willing to pay more than UA or Chinese carriers charge.

JAL has cabin crew bases outside Japan, and apart from serving their local markets, they also cycle through serving some of the long haul destinations. So I don't think it is for this specific reason that the flight attendants were there, more a cost issue.

The reason is there are two countries in the world where people speak no other language. One is the US, and the other is China.
(qualifier, there are probably many but there are only 2 with so much clout that people learn their language, or just hire someone who speaks it)

Any chance these passengers might be flying to TPE, SIN, KUL or even HKG? How are you so sure they are going to Mainland China?

Knowing Jal tend to favor premium pax then low paying fare hence their rate were much higher than competition.

You can really see how they configured their planes and you can see they had less capacity vs other competitors. I once read local business newspaper of interview with one of the Jal finance manager that they target more premium pax. Dont think they wanted to dilute the already limited seat with lower paying pax.

Perhaps the "Chinese" crew you saw on the flight to New York is Singaporean as they do they rotate to New York & Seattle. Likewise they have Shanghai Base crew when u had your flight to/fro China to Japan. I think generally they had 3/4 foreign crew per flight. They had BKK crew rotated here and there too.

I have no idea why they rotate HKG crew to/fro KUL flight. Previously I know they were served by SIN crew. My experience is that most pax were mostly Japanese and they were only very small minority is foreigner (eg malaysian/other nationalities or westerners) on JAL as compared to MH on the same route.

I can say JAL/ANA were actively promoting the connection to North America in their printed ads in KUL. Likewise for EVA(BR) and also Philippines Airlines too