JAL are upgrading their service between Sydney and Tokyo to a 777-300ER from December 28th, which has a significantly better Business Class than the existing 777-200ER on the route, which is angled-flat. JAL’s 777-300ER also includes eight first class seats and the change makes JAL one of the handful of carriers left operating First Class into / out of Australia.
The best part is that there are many, many dates available with First Class availability during that time – the screenshot below shows a search for two seats. Incidentally, Business Class availability is non-existent.
JAL’s First Class product is very competitive and I’d love to check it out. This could be a great excuse for some skiing in Japan this winter…
Availability isn’t showing on Qantas.com for some reason so you’ll need to call them to book. You may be able to argue the point and avoid the booking fee given that it’s not showing online.
In terms of points, you’d be looking at 108,000 Qantas Points each way, 70,000 Asia Miles one way, or 120,000 Asia Miles return. If you’re looking to use the current US Airways ‘Buy Miles’ promotion you’d need 120,000 Dividend Miles, which surpasses the 100,000 limit you can buy with a bonus – but you could still buy up to 120,000 needed for somewhere around $2750 after currency conversions.
This is only a temporary change, unfortunately, with the service ending on March 28th (at this point). I guess if the increased capacity continues to be needed, then they might consider keeping it running.
Get in now if you’re interested, the availability won’t last long!
Hi Keith, Any idea what the “word on the street” is about the upgraded service? Any thoughts on whether it will happen again for the 2015/2016 season?
So far all pointers lead to JAL downgauging the 777 as planned in March 🙁
I received a press release from JAL in the last couple of weeks outlining their fleet plans and this was still documented as being the case there.
Re usdm I eventually managed to book these JAL F award seats through them – but it took 7 calls to find an agent with the magic touch who could do it. Looking forward to new year in Japan! Got my connecting Qantas flights to Syd included too (and a short stopover to see my folks for xmas en route) which given the time of year made it very good value in my book.
Nice one, enjoy!
“You may be argue the point and avoid the booking fee given that it’s not showing online.”
Has this worked for anyone before? I normally have to pay the usual 6.000 points to book tickets over the phone even if they don’t show on Wantas Website. I’ve argued with Qantas many times but they always charge me.
Yep, I’ve had success but only on limited occasions. The one that comes to mind is where the QF site was erroring when thing to search for Business availability from Frankfurt. To Frankfurt was fine, and they let me book. Doesn’t hurt to try.
I read a lot of comments in Lucky’s blog, One Mile at a Time, a lot of people are experiencing problem booking these first class seats with USDM! One person even called 10 times and twice with supervisors. Somehow US airways can’t see these award seats!!!!
I’m not sure if anyone had any luck with USDM here, but I guess it’s better to call to make sure you can get the seats before commuting yourselves to buy USDM for this.
Otherwise, with Asia Miles, no problem at all. They can see the award seats wide open! My seat was confirmed immediately and ticketed the same day! So for those with tonnes of AMEX MR or Westpac altitude points, Asia miles is the way to go to grab these seats!
It would seem USDM can only access JAL flights 90 days from departure, but that has not been confirmed yet.
I saw this on the USDM T&C
“Awards booked on Japan Airlines are valid for the next 90 days starting from the following day of the Award Ticket issuance. Reservations for domestic JAL Award Flights within Japan must be made no earlier than 0930 Japan time, two months prior to travel.”
I dived in and got upgraded to first class rt with extra 40000 Asia miles. So there should be one extra business class award seat available on Feb 14 ex Syd, and Feb 21 ex NRT.
Hmm…. First time in first class in my life!
But I noticed something while I was checking for availability on JAL’s own website. It looks like you only need 80000 JMB miles for rt in first class!!!! (Plus 61000 JPY fuel surcharge, that’s cheaper than what CX charged me!) That’s the cheapest first class redemption I’ve seen in any program! Is JAL throwing away these seats at ridiculously low price to their own members? Or was that one way only and I’m missing something? I’m not a JMB expert…..
Addition: the other thing I noticed, is that you CAN’T BUY FIRST CLASS departing from Australia!!!! I was just checking to see how much this would’ve costed me if I bought it and try to figure out how much money/mile I got. The highest class I can choose is business! No first class available! I was able to find NRT to SYD from JAL’s Japanese site. The cost is a whopping ¥1,400,000! That’s like $14500! So I got >$0.12c/mile! Good deal!
BTW, does this mean JAL never wanted to sell these first class seats, but give out as a bonus during their fleet reshuffling? Does that mean all 8 first class seats are all for awards? Interesting……
That’s pretty interesting. Can only assume they haven’t defined or loaded the First class fares yet out of Sydney.
It’s a shame you can’t efficiently get JMB miles from AU credit card spend – which is why I haven’t really covered the program.
It’s not all lost though. What about transferring via SPG? JAL is a transfer partner of SPG at 1:1 ratio, so obviously people with MR can transfer to SPG then to JAL, although at a poor 2:1 ratio.
However, what about purchasing SPG points? When SPG goes on sale, they offer 25% discount, which brings the cost down to $0.26/mile. When you transfer to JMB at 20000 points you get bonus 5000 points. This effectively reduce the cost down to $0.21/mile. Therefore, for first class SYD-NRT rt at 80000 miles, that equates to only USD$1680 rt in F(plus surcharges of course….) and $1260 in J, which is darn cheap!
Of course you need to have enough family members in your household to make this work as SPG only allows you to buy up to 20000 points/year……
Could be a useful way to leverage a bonus on SPG purchased points, sure – but no bonus on right now.
On your last point, there aren’t limits with SPG on the number of points you can buy (I think) – just the 20,000 sweet spot for airline transfers which yields the 5,000 point bonus. So no point transferring 40,000 points, do it as two lots of 20k.
AWESOME-OOOO Keith! Woot woot
Thanks for the tip.
“Incidentally, Business Class availability is non-existent.”
That’s because bastards like me have already grabbed it a year ago for ski trip 😛 (Hakuba, here I come!!!) The first class seats just suddenly popped up with the 777-300ER and I doubt they can sell much of it considering that most AUS-JPN passengers are leisure travelers.
I am tossing whether I should upgrade to first class now……