As I recently wrote about, we’re taking a winter ski trip to Niseko, Japan, staying at four different points properties. I’ve already shared the return portion of the trip that I booked, where I’ll be flying ANA’s A380 first class and Hawaiian’s 787 first class. However, I didn’t finalize the outbound portion of the trip until last minute, for good reason.
While the product review might not be that original, I think most people will appreciate the quantity of first class award seats that we managed to book…
Booking half a Japan Airlines first class cabin with points
When I take my review trips and book flights in international first class, people sometimes make one of two points:
“You’re traveling alone, so this award availability isn’t useful for those who travel as couples or families, since it’s hard to find first class availability for multiple people”
“You have the flexibility to travel whenever, so first class awards aren’t useful for those who need to be somewhere on a specific day”
I hear you, but I’ll counter the point by saying that we just snagged four Japan Airlines first class award seats on a single flight from San Francisco (SFO) to Tokyo (HND), on the exact date we needed. And we paid just 80,000 American AAdvantage miles plus $5.60 per person in taxes.
Let me provide a bit of background. We’re going skiing with friends, and of course we were perfectly happy flying there separately, and just meeting in Japan. Japan is not exactly an easy destination to redeem miles to. Our hotel reservations were for specific dates, and with hotels in ski season needing to be canceled 60 days in advance, we had very little flexibility.
So we did what I usually recommend — we locked in business class awards in advance that we were happy with (with AAdvantage miles, so there were no redeposit fees), and then kept checking closer to departure to see if anything better opened up.
Long story short, the persistence paid off, and four first class award seats opened up on the same flight, around four days before departure. My apologies to the other first class passenger. 😉
We booked four Japan Airlines first class award seats
How did we find four first class award seats on one flight?
Finding the first class award availability was easy. I’m a blogger, so of course I just called up American, said “hey, I’m a blogger, make those award seats available on your partner airline plz,” and a few minutes later, I had a ticket.
I kid, of course, but it’s amazing how often people seem to think that happens. 😉 I have access to exactly the same tools as everyone else, I just have some experience, and am also really persistent.
So, let me share how I approached the process of booking these seats: Japan Airlines is pretty consistent about how it releases first class award availability:
It makes one first class award seat available as soon as the schedule opens
As the departure date approaches, unsold seats are generally made available with miles; in my experience, all but one to three first class seats will eventually be released as award seats, and the closer to departure you are, the more seats are made available
To start, I researched which Japan Airlines flights on the day we needed actually had a lot of first class seats for sale. Japan Airlines’ 777s have eight first class seats, and if there’s not currently award availability, then there will be at most seven seats for sale. That’s because the airline always makes one first class award seat available when the schedule opens, so that means one person has already snagged a seat (if all eight seats were for sale, there would also be one award seat).
You can see how many seats are available for sale either through a tool like ExpertFlyer, or you can use just use Google Flights, and see how many first class tickets it’ll still sell you on a flight.
Just as an example, below is a Google Flights search, to see which Japan Airlines flights from San Francisco to Tokyo have seven first class seats left for sale.
Japan Airlines first class availability
After entering the parameters (first class, nonstop, Japan Airlines), I pulled up the calendar, and as you can see, quite a few days over the next couple of months have seven of the eight first class seats for sale.
Japan Airlines first class availability
From there, it’s just a function of being persistent, and constantly checking award availability. Now, tools like Seats.aero specifically have a Japan Airlines first class award finder, which comes in handy. Here’s the thing, though — these awards are super competitive to actually book, especially with tools like this, which display availability in such an easy way. Seats.aero doesn’t update in real time, so there’s typically a bit of a lag.
While I keep an eye on Seats.aero, often I use it primarily to figure out availability patterns, and then religiously check aa.com for availability, realizing that it helps to have a leg up, and book those seats as soon as they become available.
I noticed most availability from the US was only being made available within a week or so of departure. Starting at that point, I’d check aa.com availability on the route very often. I even saved the exact URL that performed the search for that date and route as a bookmark. So for the times where I was at my computer, I maybe clicked the link every 30 minutes or so.
It literally takes just seconds, so I was collectively spending a few minutes per day looking up availability. Sure enough, four days before departure, the airline opened up exactly four first class award seats, so we booked them right away. How awesome!
Interestingly, no additional award seats ended up being made available, so this was a flight where the airline held back three first class seats (which I find is the most seats that the airline won’t open up as awards).
The flight ultimately had only one other passenger in first class. Man, that’s not a terribly profitable first class cabin for the airline, since the other passenger also presumably redeemed miles.
It’s tough to beat four first class award seats!
Bottom line
We managed to snag four first class award seats on a single Japan Airlines transpacific flight, which I thought was a pretty cool opportunity. I’ve only otherwise ever booked four first class award seats on a single long haul flight with Lufthansa, so it was fun to try this on another airline.
It required a lot of persistence, but ultimately nothing too crazy. It was a function of identifying the flights that had the most first class seats for sale, and then checking availability religiously. I continue to get huge value from American AAdvantage miles, and am so happy that we were able to all travel together in comfort, in an incredible (but dated) first class.
AloJapan.com