Best way to book award flight on JAL with qantas points

[lvabarg]

I am trying to book a return flight, from Tokyo, to the east coast of America, using qantas points. I only want to fly on JAL, and go directly to one of either New York or Boston. Whenever I put in my dates on Qantas.com, none of the JAL flights come up as options. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to get the JAL options? Thanks for your help in advance.

 

[kelvedon]

I believe you have to call Qantas for JAL award bookings

 

[Buzzard]

+1 what kelvedon wrote.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I am trying to book a return flight, from Tokyo, to the east coast of America, using qantas points. I only want to fly on JAL, and go directly to one of either New York or Boston. Whenever I put in my dates on Qantas.com, none of the JAL flights come up as options. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to get the JAL options? Thanks for your help in advance.

You can search for JL availability either through JAL mielage bank (free to join), or BA.

Booking needs to be done directly with QF.

 

[Mark3000]

Has anyone ever had any luck finding more than 2 J seats on JAL, from AUS - Tokyo?
We're planning a ski trip for next Xmas

 

[Colrad]

You can search for JL availability either through JAL mielage bank (free to join), or BA.

Booking needs to be done directly with QF.

And make sure you are persistent with the QF Customer Service Officer, as it can be hit and miss.

Short version…I was able to use QFF points to book five F class seats on JAL across two days for this coming April. But had to speak to multiple QFF CSO’s after being given conflicting advice.

If you want the longer version…keep reading below…

About 10 months ago, I booked a family holiday (Myself and Mrs Colrad, plus our three boys 13, 15 and 17) to Japan for this coming Easter.

Outbound, after a bit of searching, I was able to find seats for all five of us on EK J to SIN and then JAL J to HND. Pretty simple.

Return leg, not so easy.

Eventually, I found 4 Jetstar NRT-MEL in Star Class. Not ideal, but direct daytime flight on the date the brood wanted to come back and, as Mrs Colrad said: "How bad could it be?"

I had a bit more flexibility in terms of when I needed to be back in Melbourne and after quite a bit of searching and multiple combinations, I was able to put together an itinerary that went: HND-HKG in CX F; HKG-SIN in CX J; then SIN-MEL in EK F, getting me back to Melbourne a day later than the family.

Also, not ideal, but hey, there are certainly worse ways to spend 20 or so hours.

Then, as luck would have it, I was cruising around the BA Exec Club site (as you do) a couple of weeks ago, and I noticed that the JAL NRT-SYD flight had been upgraded to the 777-300, with 4 reward seats showing as available in F on the date Mrs C and the kids, were returning to Melbourne.

Armed with this knowledge I called up Qantas told them I could see 4 JAL F seats available, and was there any chance I might get 5? Not surprisingly, the answer was: no there are only 4, but I could definitely change my existing Jetstar Star Class booking to JAL F class, for 60k points per person, including the change fee.

This seemed like a reasonable deal – Mrs C and the offspring certainly thought so – so I handed over the points, and just like that, Mrs Colrad and the six-foot plus teens were suddenly catapulted from Jetstar “business” to JAL First!

I just had to buy four SYD-MEL tix for the last leg of their journey. And they were sorted.

Now I had to work out whether to change my own booking.

As I already had F in CX and EK locked in, and there were 4 F seats on the JAL flight showing on each of the next two days, I decided to sleep on it (always risky, I know - but I figured I was covered either way).

Having decided I'd rather have one long flight in F, versus two shorter F hops broken by a J leg. I decided I would just book a night at a Narita Airport hotel and change my own flight to NRT-SYD in JAL First for the day after my family.

So, the next day I checked the BA site again and while one seat had been taken, it was still showing 3 F reward seats available.

I called QF to make the change.

But this time the CSO I spoke with said she couldn’t see any award availability. I told her I was looking at 3 F seats on the BA site.

I also explained that ExpertFlyer was showing 7 of the 8 seats in F on the flight I was wanting as ‘unoccupied’, reinforcing my view that there was likely to be award availability, and entirely consistent with the BA site showing 3 award seats – with one obviously having been booked overnight.

She tried to tell me the airlines released seats in blocks to their different airline partners and these might have been availability for BA Exec Club members but not QFF. I told her politely that I did believe this to be the case when both airlines were Oneworld partners, and there was reward availability showing on another Oneworld airline’s site.

This went on for about 15 minutes (seriously), and just I was about to say: don’t worry about it, she said: "Let me check with my supervisor."

About five minutes later I was transferred to someone else, who asked me what I was trying to do and when I explained, she said she'd have a look for me.

Straight away she said she could see 3 seats in F available on the flight I had been trying to book, before adding: “Why couldn't she (the other CSO) see them, what was she doing?" I said I didn't know, as I couldn’t figure it our either.

Anyway, long story (sorry) - she was able change my existing booking from CX and EK to JAL (all with QFF points).

I also got 34k QFF points and some taxes back – even after I’d been charged the change fee and added a SYD-MEL J leg.

Moral of the story, keep checking the various sites for availability and when you call QF to book the seats you can see, be firm but polite.

And if you think you are being told the wrong thing - ask to speak with someone else.

Happy searching (and F flying).

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Moral of the story, keep checking the various sites for availability and when you call QF to book the seats you can see, be firm but polite.

And if you think you are being told the wrong thing - ask to speak with someone else.

Happy searching (and F flying).

Good advice, although the BA (and QF) booking engines often show phantom availability. Dun matter how many seats they show, they can't be booked. Prodding QF res won't achieve results.

EF flyer showing 7 out of 8 seats unoccupied is also no indicator of the likely availability of F award seats.

nice redemption though

 

[Colrad]

Good advice, although the BA (and QF) booking engines often show phantom availability. Dun matter how many seats they show, they can't be booked. Prodding QF res won't achieve results.

EF flyer showing 7 out of 8 seats unoccupied is also no indicator of the likely availability of F award seats.

nice redemption though

Thanks MEL-traveller.

Agree re: ExpertFlyer unoccupied not meaning award availability, I only mentioned it to illustrate the fact that it was consistent with BA showing 4 award seats one day, and the 3 the next - with ExpertFlyer seat occupancy changing in a commensurate way.

On the point about phantom availability, I have experienced this on QF also - but never on BA. Wherever, I have seen availability on BA, I have been able to book it - albeit with a bit of prodding required on occasion

And this has been across multiple OW carriers - JL, QR, CX, MH. It has also been very helpful in triggering CX availability which the QF site doesn't show if there is a QF or JQ alternative. BA just shows all the options, in my experience. But the lack of a multi-city search can be frustrating.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

And this has been across multiple OW carriers - JL, QR, CX, MH. It has also been very helpful in triggering CX availability which the QF site doesn't show if there is a QF or JQ alternative. BA just shows all the options, in my experience. But the lack of a multi-city search can be frustrating.

CX is the worst for phantom availability on BA/QF. Although maybe it depends how far out you're looking. Close in (within a couple weeks of departure) there's plenty of phantom on both BA and QF. The JL site tends to under-report CX, but is way more accurate (at least for close-in)

 

[Saintza]

I had the same issue booking JL award seats with the first agent not being able to see them but the second had no trouble. Apparently there's 2 ways for QF staff to search for them and many use the wrong method. They need to search through "redemption" instead of "flight availability"

 

[madrooster]

They need to search through "redemption" instead of "flight availability"

That's correct - not all airlines have their redemption availability under general flight availability. In some cases you have to force search a specific flight number to get it to come up by doing a long sell but generally you don't need to resort to that...

 

[ozbeachbabe]

I had the same issue booking JL award seats with the first agent not being able to see them but the second had no trouble.

Apparently there's 2 ways for QF staff to search for them and many use the wrong method. They need to search through "redemption" instead of "flight availability"

I'm not saying this is the reason but it could be that the res agent is not specifying the award classes in the availability entries.

For Amadeus system user airlines eg QF, BA, CX, AY etc if you searched for general availability which may or may not display award fare buckets you would enter:

AN31MAYNRTSYD/AQF

This translates to 'availability neutral/date/city pair/airline QF'

In addition to specifying the airline, you can also specify up to 3 fare buckets so if you were looking at award availability you could enter:

AN31MAYNRTSYD/AQF/CU, Z, X

This translates to 'availability neutral/date/city pair/airline QF/classes U, Z & X'

I was trained in native Amadeus so the above entries are native Amadeus commands. Many airlines now have GUI front ends or templates that sit on top of the Amadeus Platform so most CSR's who work in airline res departments would not be physically typing in the above but would be hitting a button that behind the scenes does the above entries.