Questions and Answers

Hey friends!

I have scheduled a (tentative) trip to Japan in the middle of October, since I was lucky enough to find ANA First award availability for 2 between JFK and NRT.
As luck would have it, ANA announced some serious schedule cuts for the second half of the year, and it looks like that route got the chop. They do say that the changes are not set in stone and may evolve based on the situation.

When I go to check my reservation on ANA’s website, it’s still there and nothing’s changed. But if I try to book a paid ticket on their website, those flights are not available to book.

I’m tempted to stay put for now and wait it out, but what would you all do? Just wait for a bit longer, or be proactive about it and try to get rebooked on different flights? I’m also not sure if they would automatically put us on different flights or simply cancel our tickets (FWIW we booked directly with ANA points).
Thank you!

I guess it’s a personal choice. If you can find a one-stop with 2 seats (maybe ORD?) that’s acceptable then *my* choice would be to book that. But since I’d have to connect to get to an ANA airport anyway it wouldn’t be as big a dilemma for me as for those who might have a non-stop option.

Still, with the way the COVID situation is changing, if travel and future bookings pick up in the summer they might reinstate that route so you might want to hang on for the time being and re-evaluate later.

Either way, I think the fact that you used their own miles was a good choice because they should be forced to accommodate you whereas if you’d booked with other miles they might simply choose to refund the ticket.

[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 71673, member: 184″]I guess it’s a personal choice. If you can find a one-stop with 2 seats (maybe ORD?) that’s acceptable then *my* choice would be to book that. [/QUOTE]

Thank you! The hope was also to try the new ANA seats, which are not available on the ORD route (yet?) – otherwise yes, I would likely aim at an unaffected route.

So quick update on this: yesterday we got the emails that our flights were cancelled. They did not put us on another flight (the flights to/from HND are still there), but they also did not refund the points.

So I just called, and the agent said she would switch us to the HND flights. After a little while, she said that she had to put us on the waitlist because there is no availability, and to call back on Friday to see if it clears. I assume that she meant there is no [B]award[/B] availability (duh), because other than that the seat maps show empty on these flights.

[B]Question[/B]: I remember seeing somewhere that when an airline cancels a flight, they have to reaccomodate you no matter what, as long as there are seats available, regardless of if there’s award availability. Does someone know if that’s true, and how I could leverage that knowing that?

[I][B]Edit:[/B][/I] a few hours later our new seats have already been confirmed so looks like all is good.