Award Availability to KIX?
 

Have been trying to find "Perksaver" award trip to Osaka for end of July/beginning of August from anywhere in Wisconsin or ORD. There seems to be plenty of availability on the outbound trip, but nothing on the return! August must be a busy month for Japanese tourists in the US??

I've tried several city combinations, and have even looked at other places in Japan (ie to Tokyo or Nagoya), but still nothing. Also, I've checked with Delta and Continental, but nothing there either. Any suggestions about other places to look for availability? Or other airports to try?

With all the various Japan-US flights on NW, CO, DL and even KE (via ICN), you should be able to find SOMETHING, even if it's not from KIX.

Try calling. Not everything shows up on nwa.com.

You could always try one of the 7 daily CONUS flights NW has to NRT each day (8 on Saturdays) and from NRT, grab a 19,000 mile intra-Japan award to either KIX or ITM. Having done NRT-ITM, it's not the most fun you'll have, and make sure you've got plenty of time (at least 2 hours, ideally 3), but if you've gotta go...

August is peak overseas travel time for Japanese. It is the obon holiday period. We've gotten award seats for this time, and mileage upgrades...but all of them were booked well in advance. There were award seats available during August this past February...haven't seen any since. The flights generallly all sell out...overbook even..so don't expect award seats to open up later. In 11 years of traveling between the US and Japan, we've had one mileage upgrade clear close to the date of flight...all other ones were well in advance.

I didn see awards available on Continental...but I don't know how many of those would be available to WP mileage users. You might try them.

Try connecting through HNL. I'm in Osaka now and went fron LAX-HNL (on CO in 1st class) and then HNL-KIX in business on the DC10. We spent a week in Hawaii before continuing on to KIX.

Thanks all for your help and suggestions.

Kakjapan, when did you see availability on CO? I looked yesterday and the online availability looked just like NW, with only 8/31 having "perksaver" economy available. Also, I did notice the availability in February, like you said, but at that point did not know that I would be going (it's a ticket for a companion to travel with me to a meeting).

Themicah, is there any way to check KE availability without signing up for their program? I went to their website but a login was required.

I will keep looking, and will try to call to see if anything else is out there.

nwa.com does not usually show accurate availability for partner awards, and some partners (like KE) can only be booked over the phone. There is no way to check KE award availability without calling, as far as I know.

So, it's official...I called NWA Worldperks for assistance and they saw the same thing I did. Plenty of availability on the outbound leg, and nothing on the return...
Also, KE is blacked out for international travel during parts of July and August, so that won't work either.
I guess I'll keep my eyes open and hope something opens up!

It was quite a while ago when I saw the availability on CO. We had considered getting 3 award tickets this year August 5 - 19, KIX or NGO - TPA - KIX or NGO. There were 3 seats for 60,000 miles on NWA available in January 2006...they are long gone now, though. We decided to pay money in the end for a circle trip with 5 stops on CO in August for $4000.00 for 3 tickets...way cheaper than NWA, and the fare class will earn 100% mileage for World Perks.

How about a stopover in HNL?
 

One of a great think about Award travel is that NW allows a free stop (one only) over at one of the International Gateway for your international itinerary. HNL is one of those gateways and you can spend a few days (or more), if you want. (Can't have a open-jaw and a stopover though).

Looking through availabilty for connecting itinerary all the way from KIX to your final destination might not be available otherwise. Breaking it up into pieces might be a better idea.

Jiburi

Jiburi,

Yes, I looked into this. Unfortunately, a MSN-DTW-KIX-HNL-MSP-MSN itinerary is 90,000 miles, just like the MSN-DTW-KIX-DTW-MSN.