Japan Airlines (JAL) has a handy feature for finding Oneworld award availability on its website. The JAL website displays award availability for all 13 Oneworld member airlines, including Qantas and Cathay Pacific, and you can view availability across all Oneworld airlines in a single search.
JAL’s Oneworld Award search tool is a handy addition to the Qantas and British Airways websites. Both of these websites also show award availability across all airlines. But each site has its own quirks and limitations.
The Qantas website can be a handy tool as you can easily see award availability over an entire month and across all classes of travel in one search. But the Qantas website also shows award availability on airlines that aren’t part of the Oneworld alliance, such as China Eastern, Emirates and Jetstar. The Qantas website also has a habit of sometimes showing phantom award availability – something that the JAL website does not generally do.
Unfortunately, the JAL website only allows you to search for Oneworld award availability one day at a time. And if there is no availability on the date or route you’ve searched, you’ll get an error message. But the website is really good at finding any Oneworld reward seats that do exist on the date and route you wish to travel.
Let’s have a look at the Japan Airlines website in action…
Firstly, log in to your Mileage Bank account on the Japan Airlines website for your country. You will need to be a Japan Airlines Mileage Bank member to search for award availability on the JAL website. It’s free to create an account.
Once you’ve logged in, scroll down to “JMB Partner Airlines Award Tickets” under the “Redeem your miles” menu:
Then, select “JMB Partner Airlines Award Ticket” under “Book ticket”:
To search for award availability across all Oneworld airlines in a single search, click on “oneworld Award Tickets” at the top of the next page. The website will give you the option to search for multiple sectors at a time, but you can add or delete sectors as required. We recommend searching one sector at a time; click on “Delete the last sector” to remove Sector 2:
Then, enter the route, date, number of passengers and class of travel you wish to search for. One quirk of the JAL website is that it only lets you search by city, and not by airport. Searching for flights to London (LON) will bring up flights to all London airports, including Heathrow (LHR) and Gatwick (LGW).
The search results will show the most direct itineraries first by default, but you can filter the results by routings or departure times. Beware that, if you search for award availability in a premium cabin, flights in Economy may show. You can tell this as there will be a “please check” notice. If you click on this, it will tell you which class of travel is available. In the below example, the three direct flights from Singapore to London are all available only in Economy…
But if we scroll down, there are several available flights with Business class availability. One advantage of the Japan Airlines website is that it displays the number of seats remaining.
If you don’t have enough JAL Mileage Bank miles in your account to make a booking, clicking through to the next page will produce the following error message:
The availability is generally accurate, and you should be able to book any Oneworld award availability that you find on the JAL website using Qantas Frequent Flyer points, American Airlines Advantage or any other Oneworld currency. However, note that Japan Airlines may release more seats on Japan Airlines’ own flights to Mileage Bank members than it does to members of other Oneworld frequent flyer programs.
The Japan Airlines website can also be used to check award availability on Air France, Alaska Airlines, Emirates, Hawaiian Airlines, Korean Air, China Eastern and Bangkok Airways. The ability to search for Hawaiian Airlines award availability is particularly useful as there are not many websites that allow you to do this. To search for award seats on these airlines, you would need to conduct a “JMB Partner Airlines Award Tickets” search. In this case, you can only search one airline at a time.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: JAL website now shows Oneworld award availability for all airlines
