Questions and Answers

I needed to vent and thought this is as good a place as any. I was very lucky and found 2 Business Class MileSAAver seats in early February From Austin to Manila on Japan Airlines in September. I immediately began looking for return MileSAAver seats and have found zero availability for 6 months now. I have every possible seat alert set on Expert Flyer as well as checking Japan Airlines awards on British Airways site. The frustrating part is the huge inventory of available seats on virtually every flight. There are 2 NRT to DFW flights that would be ideal. Of the 70 Business Class seats only 8 are taken. This is the same ratio on virtually every flight. It’s so frustrating to have the miles but not be able to redeem them for premium seats.

Have you tried searching for awards from Tokyo to one of their other North American gateways and then a connecting flight on American? Or flights via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific to one of their North American gateways and then a connecting AA flight?

With awards, it is frustrating when the cabin is wide open but there are no award seats. However, it’s best to also have some flexibility with the airline and different routings. obviously additional connections are not ideal but sometimes that’s all that is available.

If there are no AA saver flights from the North American entry point to Austin, look into booking a separate ticket for that. The most important flight is the TPAC – get that first.

Especially check the NRT-SAN route. I was able to find award space for 2 people there (albeit the other direction) for a couple of friends awhile back. Found one seat on the ORD-NRT route and like you, monitored other routes but never did find space. Was able to nail down seats on Cathay however.

[QUOTE=”David W, post: 33712, member: 29″]Have you tried searching for awards from Tokyo to one of their other North American gateways and then a connecting flight on American? Or flights via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific to one of their North American gateways and then a connecting AA flight?

With awards, it is frustrating when the cabin is wide open but there are no award seats. However, it’s best to also have some flexibility with the airline and different routings. obviously additional connections are not ideal but sometimes that’s all that is available.

If there are no AA saver flights from the North American entry point to Austin, look into booking a separate ticket for that. The most important flight is the TPAC – get that first.[/QUOTE]
Davis thanks for your reply! I have alerts set up for every American nonstop flight to the US from both Tokyo airports. I’ve also been checking all available JAL flights on BA site.

I had not thought of the Cathay Pacific option from Hong Kong thanks! I am not seeing any availability but will keep checking.

[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 33713, member: 184″]Especially check the NRT-SAN route. I was able to find award space for 2 people there (albeit the other direction) for a couple of friends awhile back. Found one seat on the ORD-NRT route and like you, monitored other routes but never did find space. Was able to nail down seats on Cathay however.[/QUOTE]
MidSouth thanks for your reply! Right now there is no availability on the NRT-SAN flight but I will keep looking at it. I have found some economy seats on both American and JAL but hate to give up the Business Class search as I am tall and it’s a long flight!

If you’re open to flying from Haneda, there’s a HND-SFO flight as well.