That's because you can't yet earn status on AAdvantage by flying JAL. This makes sense as JAL is not yet a oneworld member.

Just found this page on the JAL website (found link through this page which was linked from the home page for Australia).

The page has a nice little summary of the cost of the fare across different countries, just click on the 'fares' tab.

It is more a function of how JAL Global Club works. JAL Global Club gives you more or less permanent mid-tier status on JAL. If you fly 50,000 elite qualifying miles in one year AND apply for the JAL credit card (of, if you are a North American member, pay some fee in the form of miles), you can join JAL Global Club and have status (with lounge access, priority checkin, priority boarding, etc.) for as long as you hold the credit card (regardless of how much or how little you fly JAL).

With JAL joining the Oneworld alliance, they are giving JAL Global Club members Oneworld status even if they don't fly much in a given year.

ANA does something similar, but I understand that ANA Super Flyers Club members get Star Alliance Gold even if they fly fewer than 20,000 miles in a year. To get Oneworld Sapphire status, JAL Global Club members must fly at least 20,000 miles.

Starting April 1 you'll earn AAdvantage EQMs/EQPs when you fly JAL and credit the flight to AAdvantage. Before April 1 you have to fly an AA-coded JAL flight (codeshare) to get AAdvantage EQMs/EQPs, and the AA flight number has to be on your boarding pass.

It's unclear how JAL miles will translate into AAdvantage EQMs/EQPs. I can explain how JAL does it, though. JAL only has EQPs (called FLY ON points) for JAL Mileage Bank members, and the number of FLY ON points you get is pretty complicated. For JMB you get 2 FLY ON points per mile for Japanese domestic flights, 1.5 FLY ON points per mile for Japan-China flights, and 1 FLY ON point per mile for everything else (including long distance international). There's a 25% class of service bonus for business class and 50% for first class. Discount economy fares earn only 70% of flight mileage. There is no minimum number of FLY ON points per flight: a short flight yields very few FLY ON points.

Yes.

Head over to the JAL forum to look at the "Unofficial Guide" thread. It explains how it all works. JAL Mileage Bank is an interesting program for oneworld, and it will be attractive to some who are shopping for a oneworld frequent flyer program. One thing to understand is that JAL actually has two parallel recognition programs: JMB and JAL Global Club (JGC).

JMB is great for high-revenue (paid J and full-fare Y) flyers and terrible for discount Y flyers. Terrible for Y flyers because discount fares don't get full mileage credit and because miles expire after 3 years. Great for paid J and full Y flyers because the limitation of benefits for discount flyers means much more award availability (i.e. fewer people competing for award seats) and because all the best bonus offers are targeted to the higher fare classes.

(Of course, YOU know all this, but I thought maybe others on this forum who are contemplating JMB might want to know...)

The JMB program (and ANA's program) probably makes the most business sense from the airline's perspective. The US airlines have gone way too far in giving out miles and status to too many people, and the resulting liabilities have become a burden on the airlines and significantly diluted benefits for the true high-revenue flyers.

JL joining OW changes all that. Now those "readily available" award seats will be taken by other OW programs.

The most profitable part of every airline is their FF program. It is hardly a burden for the airlines, just look at their annual reports for their FF liability amount! More like a license to print money. The FF business model is predicated upon the majority of FF miles never being redeemed, and the airlines are in full control of the rules to make that happen. The Economist had a multi-page analysis of this a year or 2 ago, quite interesting reading and closely matching what has happened since then. To put FF miles into perspective, it is now the largest currency in circulation in the world (exceeding the value of US Dollars in circulation as either paper currency or current account balances).

Possibly because JL doesn't allow their top-tier access to F lounges. Then again, AA didn't prior to oneWorld either. I wonder if JAL will re-brand their F lounges (like Concorde Room) so that they don't have to admit Emeralds.

That issue being beyond my Economist horizon, do you recall how they valued a mile? (And will I spoil a secret by mentioning that one can get a year of the magazine for about 3500 NW miles?)

It was in Jan 2005 and still in the subscription part of http://www.economist.com

They counted 14 trillion FF miles issued and recognized that the value differed considerably between plans and even with types of usage. They picked a dubious USD 0.05 value per FF mile, giving the staggering USD 700 billion in FF miles outstanding. But even at 1/4 that valuation, it is still a huge number (or rather, a number that the airlines have no intention in giving out as a benefit).
From the article (which was classic British humour, btw):

"But what is a mile worth? Airlines sell them to credit-card firms at an average of just under 2 cents a mile; their value when used to buy a ticket or to upgrade to business class can be anywhere between 1 cent and over 10 cents per mile. Using the mid-point of this range means that the global stock of frequent-flyer miles is now worth over $700 billion, more than all the dollar notes and coins at large."

Yes, I agree. However, oneworld membership introduces some interesting quirks. The 20K JGC "loophole" for getting into AAdmirals Clubs might be interesting to some people, for example. (It looks like it's an easier hurdle than Qantas or British Airways equivalent methods.)

It's also worth pointing out that redeeming JMB miles has its own quirks. Taxes and "fuel surcharges" tend to make those "free" tickets expensive, but there have been some fantastic class upgrade awards (like the 10,000 miles class upgrade promotion each way Chicago-Tokyo). JALPAK is also unique: I don't know of any other frequent flyer program that lets you redeem miles for natto. JALPAK beats those magazine offers for expiring miles, IMHO.

JAL Mileage Bank miles expire for all but Diamond elite level (top tier). That's a tough restriction.

They make business sense for Japan. I think the U.S. programs do make sense the U.S.

It will be interesting to see how oneworld award redemption on JAL affects award availability for JAL Mileage Bank members. It may not be too bad, though: JAL already had reciprocal redemption agreements with AAdvantage, BA Executive Club, and LAN at least. So I don't think the demand will change too much since JAL already had a good part of oneworld covered.