I have a F award NRT-ORD in October booked with AA miles and was notified of a significant schedule change to the timing of the flight (~10 hours). The HND-ORD same day is better timed and closer to the original NRT-ORD departure time. Does AA have the ability to request JAL open space to confirm on this flight given the significant schedule change and is it something they've historically been willing to do? I saw mentions of such a request on the Atmos thread for JAL awards but couldn't find it here so wasn't sure if AA would do the same. Not sure if F will make it more difficult but my ultimate goal is actually a J seat on the flight as my two traveling companions already have J seats on the same flight. They have the ability to move to the NRT-ORD directly as they were direct booked with JAL miles so if AA is not amendable I may end up just cancelling and hoping for a J seat last minute. Thanks for any insights.

Have you attempted going directly to the JAL website and making the change there? I just did to my booking a little over an hour ago.

I had a very similar issue as yours last year. After many many attempts of calling and hanging up, I finally found an AA agent who could fix the problem. Thankfully, I didn't have to so this this time. As I stated above, i pulled up my reservations via the JAL website and it provided me with the option to change my reservations to several dates and other flight on same day as currently held.

Thank you very much for this tip and I was able to change to the desired flight directly on the JAL website. I honestly hadn't even contemplated this approach as I always expect having to discuss flight changes with the ticketing airline, hope for award bucket availability, etc. The change here was a far easier solution than I'd originally anticipated.

Call AA and have the ticket reissued. Unless the process changed, you can pick a new fligth on the Japan Airlines web site, but AA still need to resissue the ticket. AA may proactively reissue the ticket.

+1. JAL has been remarkably good at accommodating change requests based on its recent summer schedule retimings (a stark contrast to a year ago when they did the same thing and ignored us for over a month). This is especially relevant to many of us in this thread because both ORD flights saw significant schedule shifts, and they have been some of our most popular redemptions. I was actually offered the opportunity to switch to DFW (A350) from JL 10 (777), but I decided to stick with JL 10 because the 1p departure now gives me a perfect 3 hour layover in Chicago (enough time to get through customs + check-in and lounge without spending all day there).

Between this and AA adding a new midday ORD-JAX flight since I first booked, my ORD layover has dropped from 9, to 5, to 3 hours (i.e. an awful itinerary transformed itself into a great itinerary).

We've had our August ORD-NRT-ORD F redemptions moved by 2h and 9 hours. The way back was actually advantageous and we are now able to depart from HND instead of NRT and also leave 5h earlier. I was able to change on the JAL app and then call AA to reissue.

The issue I'm having is ORD-NRT has been downgraded to a 788 and we're now in the bulkhead center seats in J. The JAL app is allowing me the same option to switch to the later flight in F on the 777, but that arrives in Tokyo at 5:30pm vs 1:15pm. If I chat/call JAL will they allow me a one stop routing thru Dallas to then be able to try the A350 First class? I'd want to fly the night before and overnight in Dallas if that matters.

Most likely I'll probably just downgrade and take the nonstop just to cut out the chance of mis-connecting. Even if AA offered to open up space on their metal in F not sure it's worth it if I have to connect I'm assuming AA will refund the difference of the 80k F awards and 60k J awards? I would think they would but I could also see that being a HUCA situation

AA doesn't offer F to Japan any more, so that won't be an option. Re-routing through DFW ought to be an option based on comments above in this thread, not sure whether the voluntary overnight layover complicates things though.

(But this reference reminded me of my very first trip to Japan in the summer of 1999, flying in F on an AA MD-11 from DFW to KIX, with 2-2-2 lie-flat seating...)

Later this spring AA will be running a 773 with F DFW-HND. Looks like it starts March 29th.

That is cool. But nobody in their right mind would pick F on the AA 77W over F on the JL A350...

Ugh.. I've run into the same problem. They moved up my connecting flight from CGK to NRT by a day and the only option is a J (downgrade from F) from NRT to ORD. Please let me know what happens when you call/chat JAL. I will do the same.

My pleasure. I didn't contemplate it either. I didn't even know there was a change since I didn't receive any communication. I had just logged in to see if I could change from 2K to 2A when I noticed the downgrade to a B788 and noticed the online option to self serve. The self serve option wasn't provided to me last year when they did their horrendous schedule change. It was a battle getting the change I wanted and I was so not looking forward to doing so again. I would have just cancelled the trip.

Awesome! Glad that things have gone in the right direction for you. I didn't notice the ability to switch to another ex USA gateway, just same gateway different dates. Hmmm, next time I will pay better attention coz if I realized this was also an option, I would have switched to a route with the A350s. As long as still in F - all's well that ends well.

I'm in a similar boat. JL F award ticket booked with AA. If I could get JL to move me to JFK or DFW instead of ORD would they leave the domestic AA segment to ORD and then i'd need to see if AA could reaccommodate me to DFW/JFK? in other words, go to JL first and seek that change and then AA? Seems antithetical to typical procedures which say go to ticketing carrier to resolve issues.

Anyone have the best way (phone number) to call JAL? I tried the 800-525-3663 and it never even rings....just drops. I was going to try chat last night but was right before I was hitting the sack and didn't want to spend 2h chatting and end up not getting anywhere.

At this point if I can't get moved to the one stop on the JL A350 thru Dallas I'll just stick in J on the nonstop. To me the extra connection + hotel cost in DFW isn't worth it to fly AA F.

Same problem with the phone #. Tried several times while I had initiated a chat. Finally someone came on chat about 2+ hrs later but it was a total waste of time. Regardless of the question/comment the response was "Apologies. Please contact American since the ticket was issued by them". So I think the only viable option is 1. Review on JAL and accept whatever option makes sense. 2. If #1 doesn't work out, check if AA can work some other viable option. Contacting JAL was a no-go (I kinda expected it) for me.