Questions and Answers

Hi Folks,

I’m very new to the miles game, and I hope I can ask some advice from the experts here.

I’m hoping to travel to Japan in economy using AAdvantage miles. Yes, economy–I’m a student again, and can’t meet as many minimum spends as I used to unfortunately. I can pretty easily find JL availability on on the transpacific leg out of LAX on JL my preferred dates, but I’m based in Chicago, where direct availability is scarce. My understanding (correct me if I’m wrong) is that a flight from Chicago, where I’m based, to LAX on American metal would be included in the redemption cost for a JAL itinerary, but is that contingent upon there being saver award space open on the ORD-LAX leg? If it’s only Anytime award space on the domestic flight, am I out of luck as far as booking ORD-LAX-KIX as a single award?

Apologies for what is perhaps an elementary question, just wanted to check. Many thanks to everyone for their collective wisdom on all the topics.

you would need saver award space for the domestic leg. JAL flies to various destinations across North America. See if you can find saver award space from ORD to the JAL gateway? You can always make free changes later on if something better shows up.

Trevor, also check for JAL availability from DFW. Alternately you could look for saver space ORD-DFW-LAX (or really, any connection to LAX).

Also from San Diego and Vancouver, which tend to be better for domestic space. You can also go the other way, and fly from Chicago to Boston or New York for your JAL flight 🙂

[USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER], I’m looking at award space to China for next year and it seems JAL has the most space? I’ve got 4 people traveling and we can go 2 x 2 but would prefer to all travel together if possible. One thing I noticed was that once we got to Tokyo there were only 2-3 business class seats from NRT to Beijing. I was considering routing 2 of us via HND instead. Good idea? Bad idea?

Also will need at least 3 seats back from HKG and would prefer to fly directly into ORD but a year out I’m not seeing availability. As our dates are fixed we can’t wait until the last minute to get set up. Suggestions?

[USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER] Grab the JAL seats first, even if you have to split it up or travel in econ for the short leg, and then make changes if/when new availability comes up.

For the return, is there no availability on any HKG-North America flight or just HKG-ORD? If theres a flight HKG-North America, grab that first and change later when space opens up? Also possible is a connection in Tokyo or flying AA metal thru LAX? Since you have firm dates, i’d book whatever is available now that could work.

Do you have miles/points elsewhere that can be used?

I’ve got diversified miles so will be ok but 2 of my friends only have AA miles and the other will be buying all the miles to cover what he needs. I was hoping that two of us could use AS miles since it will take so much fewer of them and we’d might have the chance to experience CX F if that space were to open up..

My dates are not yet available so I’m just looking at the far end of the calendar to try to predict what I’ll see. I did find seats to YYZ but that means we can’t use AS miles because we’d still have to get back to ORD (and for me, beyond that to MEM) from there and AS doesn’t fly that route.

You’re right that we may end up flying back through Tokyo – I was just *really* hoping to try out CX.

CX J should open up closer to the travel date – and JL to CX is still a oneworld partner redemption and [I]shouldnt [/I]incur any change fees with AA. If you can add an AA leg when you book, it’ll be an AA/OW mixed award and if your new itinerary still contains an AA leg, that shouldnt incur change fees either

I’m also sort of surprised that CX doesnt have any availability in J this far in advance.

Yeah, I was just hoping to use AS miles as upgrading to F using AA miles would take too many miles. But I think I better just keep my sights on business class and be happy with that. This hobby has made me greedy for F!

HAH I totally agree!

You could try and find JAL F space. They might release seats when the schedule opens – I scored 2 seats for my friends on the same flight for Jan 2017. 80k isnt totally horrible for JL F, if you can find a cheap paid flight from HKG-TYO

I think a lot of people will be re-calibrating to J in the future 🙂

I’m sort of hoping AA has even better miles purchasing promos so I can get JAL F for Oct 2017. I was planning on flying JAL one way and EK back via DXB but thats not happening anymore. Probably going to buy AS miles for CX J and have a stopover in HKG instead.

JL F, CX F doesn’t matter, it’s still 110K each way. And my friend has to buy all his miles so you can’t even buy enough for J one way and F the other.

Bummed about that AS rule requiring only one partner as they don’t fly to my city so I’d have to use two awards. Nope, going to resign myself to being happy with J.

@DavidW – *I* am looking for JAL J for Oct 2017. Don’t you take my seats! 😉

[USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER] I’ll try not to. I’m aiming for F to JFK 🙂

[QUOTE=”David W, post: 15420, member: 29″][USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER] I’ll try not to. I’m aiming for F to JFK :)[/QUOTE]

Great, then we shouldn’t be overlapping.