Questions and Answers

Hello! Back in October I found flights from Sydney to the US on Japan Airlines for December 2017 and transferred 140,000 Starwood points to my JAL account. By the time the points arrived in my JAL account, the flight was waitlisted and despite re-upping my request every week (which required at least an hour on the phone each time), the waitlist never cleared. I now have 140,000 miles in my JAL that are sooo difficult to use. So my questions are:

1) Has anyone had any luck transferring miles from JAL back to Starwood?

2) JAL has partnerships with a number of airlines but their search function makes it almost impossible to use. You have to pick the partner airline and then search and I keep getting error messages.

3) Any other suggestions on what to do with these points?

The JAL helpline has been no help. I just don’t want to lost all these miles! Thank you!

140k starpoints to JAL would have given you 175k JAL miles, assuming you transferred in increments of 20k, for the 5k bonus.

Emirates might be a good option, though JAL imposes fuel surcharges for EK awards. You can search on Alaska’s website for EK award space.

Another good option could be flying Cathay thru Hong Kong. Award space will show up on BA’s site.

It’s hard getting the points back, as you would have to get on a 3 way call with Starwood and JAL and hope for the best. There are no guarantees since these transfer’s are always noted as non-reversible and exceptions are rare.