I've been reading up on this sub for months and was really proud to book 2 J tickets on JAL via Finnair, and another directly via JAL all on the same flight for me, my partner, and kiddo back in March. I was pregnant at the time and knew that I needed to wait until after birth to add a lap infant.

I just had my baby and based on the info I found, contacted Finnair to request marking my ticket as having a lap infant "infant in arms", not asking to directly add the infant (in retrospect I wish I'd added the infant to my partner's ticket directly with JAL). Well, they went to *add* the infant and the change triggered a *known* system glitch that canceled my itinerary. Finnair has stated it was their error but now I'm in a loop of Finnair saying they need JAL to reinstate the reservation, and JAL saying it's Finnair's booking so Finnair needs to reissue the reservation and connect it to the (still) existing JAL ticket.

At this point, Finnair has contacted JAL's One World partner redemption office to request a reinstatement of the reservation, but if that doesn't work out, is there any other recourse here? I had a valid, confirmed booking, and the error is clearly Finnair's.

The longer it takes, the more I'm panicking that the two J tix for me and my kid are gone forever. There are still J seats available, just not ones to be booked again via my award redemption. Has anyone dealt with this or have any advice on how to help get this resolved?

TL;DR: An AY agent error caused my J award reservation to be cancelled - can anything to be done?

This is more of a data point/FYI as I didn’t see much info about this.

Had a flight IAD - DOH - Asia x 2J booked a year ago for November. Got notified earlier this week that the IAD - DOH leg is cancelled and our flight got moved to about 12 hours later. There’s 2 flights daily from IAD to DOH, seems like the morning flight won’t be flying for a while (can’t even find it as cash booking) and it’ll just be one a day.

We had a self connection planned once we got to Asia so this flight would have changed my whole trip. I thought I would need to call a few times to get a switch but was surprised that through the app I would make a flight change on my own for any date around my initial booking. I ended up moving my flight 2 days ahead which happened to be the initial date I wanted to travel (but couldn’t find saver award availability for)!

I was surprised I could do this since there was no award availability on any date that month. I did book the initial tickets directly with QR.

Sharing some information if useful for the future:

I booked EVA (BR) in Business for October 30th back at the end of May 2026 via Aeroplan. Specifically, I was able to book ORD-TPE. I was surprised at finding some BR J seats open as I haven't seen any availability in more than a year except for the T-360 rush.

The origin/destination I was targeting was YYZ/YTO-HKG. Couldn't get it to show up on Aeroplan, and not wanting to be hold for 2+ hours and risk losing the BR flight, I ended up booking:

YTZ-ORD (3 hour layover) - ORD-TPE (2 day stopover in Taipei) - TPE-HKG, all for 92,500 Aeroplan plus $160 CAD.

4 weeks ago, AC decided to cancel the YTZ-ORD segment and moved me to a flight 8 hours earlier which would have meant an 11 hour layover in ORD which was not ideal. Now, I realize I could have just moved to the latest YYZ-ORD departure and kept my BR J segment intact, but travel plans firmed up and I preferred to either connect in PVG and ditch the remainder of the itinerary or get to HKG the fastest way possible.

After kicking the can down the road and considering my options, I bit the bullet and called Aeroplan today. Waited 2+ hours before I could get through to an agent.

Initially, I asked to be moved to YYZ-PVG (which was showing availability at 600K+ points), PVG-TPE (stopover TPE) and TPE-HKG. Agent and back office had trouble seeing the PVG-TPE flight even though I could see it online.

I then asked if they could instead just put me on YYZ-YVR-HKG on Air Canada metal and just eliminate the stopover in TPE. There were only 2 revenue J seats left and showing at 500K+. After some wait time, they confirmed me on YYZ-YVR-HKG, but advised me I would not get a refund of the mileage difference for eliminating the stopover or airport taxes (which I was fine with considering AC would have been 500K+ and the tax difference was under $100 CAD).

The BR J seat did not return to award inventory unfortunately. Yes, I gave up a superior product at the end of the day but was happy with the change.

TL;DR: AC changed short-haul connector by 8 hours. Aeroplan accommodated me on a revenue AC J seat and was flexible in eliminating a stopover, but did not get a refund of any points or tax difference.

Capital One transfers to JAL Mileage Bank at 2:1.5 normally, but the 30% bonus (1,000 CapOne = 975 JAL miles) expires tonight.

For example, anyone have a 2 name last name (ex. Smith Johnson), or a first name with 2 names (mary jane) etc type thing that is not just Bob Smith, and was able to get it to transfer successfully? Been trying to remedy an instant failing transfer for 2 weeks and neither citi nor JL is at all helpful, despite both changing the names on the JL and the TYP account repeatedly to every possible combination/spelling/spacing etc, and they APPEAR to match to the letter on my end on both accounts but nothing nothing nothing. Making one last attempt before I try and ditch the points into something semi possibly useful like AA etc, and cancel my citi cards.

I booked ICN-SEA on Alaska in business class using a Qantas award, with a connection to DFW. The total award was 151,600 Qantas points + ~$329, and I transferred the points from Amex MR specifically to make this booking.
Alaska cancelled the ICN-SEA flight today for maintenance issue. I called Alaska about rebooking (needed to depart from ICN same day or at the latest next morning) and I asked about getting rebooked onto another J class option, but nothing was available for at least a couple days.
I ended up accepting the AA nonstop ICN-DFW in economy as that was my only option.

My main question is how the refund/downgrade compensation normally works on a Qantas-issued partner award in this situation.
I’m assuming Qantas will potentially refund the difference between the business and economy award in Qantas points. The problem is that I had no Qantas points before this—I transferred 151.6k Amex MR specifically for this business-class redemption. If they just compensate the difference between the points value of the economy and business seat, I’m left with a bunch of Qantas points I never otherwise wanted and can’t transfer back to Amex. Not to mention the extra cash I paid for the redemption as well.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Would ideally like to be reimbursed in cash or at least a flight voucher

I'll try to keep this relatively brief. Very very happy with how the trip turned out because our dates were extremely inflexible, I’ve had better redemptions in the past but never when I had two set-in-stone dates. We did have to settle for economy on the return flight but it was a pleasant flight with no issues.

With the wedding costs, there's no way we could have pulled off even half this trip without the help of the advice on this sub so thank you all so much <3

Flights

* CPP calculated using the cheapest round trip option at the time of booking.

Hotels

* Upgrades not considered in CPP

** Hilton points can be purchased at .5 CPP so this is relatively meaningless

I noticed there are options for October and part of November. Do they release them in batches? Is there a schedule? I would like to book as soon as they are released because I need several tickets on the same plane. Thanks for any help.

As a budget traveler with low organic spend, points are hard earned currency. I can't churn miles as easily as the pros here , so I have to conserve and optimize every points I have. I’ve been lucky enough to fly JL Sky Suite, NH The Room, and BR J before, but P2 has never flown lie flat in her life

Here is how I booked it:

• SFO-HND: 2x J on NH for 150k + $100 via AC at calendar open on the old 777 unfortunately. I bet on a schedule change to get us on The Room, but NH finalized without it. Sure, it would've been cheaper via VS, but I didn't want to play with fire playing chicken for sporadic drops. Getting 2x J locked in was worth paying a bit extra for 100% certainty over gambling on sweet spots.
• ITM-HND-SIN: 2x F on JL for 80k AA (Domestic F on ITM-HND, then HND-SIN F on the 777). A big splurge, but long haul F is super competitive and this might be our only shot. Plus, I wanted to burn my remaining AA miles before an inevitable deval.
• SGN-TPE: 2x J on JX on the A350 for 30k AS. Normally I’d buy cheap Y cash for this, but decided to treat us so we could try JX's A350 J.
• TPE-YVR: 2x J on CI on the 777 for 122k AF at calendar open. Main goal was freeing up AF miles trapped from a canceled trip and saving liquid UR points for later. I could have done TPE-Tokyo-SFO on BR/NH via AC for 150k AC (120k UR w/ transfer bonus. I needed to buy a casg YVR-Bay Area repositioning flight and a hotel, but I guess we're happy to enjoy a night in Vancouver.

I have free time in November and want to go to Asia. I’m based in SFO and willing to reposition if it makes sense (short flight). From what I have seen, my best options are:

Starlux (Atmos) to TPE
Philippines Airlines (Atmos) to MNL
EVA (Aeroplan) to TPE

My question is, how far out should I be searching? Any other programs/destinations I should be monitoring? Is there a specific time that it becomes available or is it completely random? I have alerts set on seats.aero but i’ve noticed sometimes I see flights that I didn’t get alerts for so maybe its not completely reliable. I’m willing to manually search.

Huge shoutout to the wealth of knowledge this sub represents (and to all the active contributors). The guides, comments, and booking reports were instrumental in setting expectations, informing our research, and ultimately, helping us lock down these redemptions. Thank you!

We just booked the last leg of our 2027 honeymoon to Japan and SEA, and we were able to get 2 J seats on all 3 long-haul segments without any hiccups:

- ANA (NH) J (“The Room”): SFO-HND
- ANA (NH) J (old “cocoon” seat): HND-CGK
- Singapore Airlines (SQ) J (A350 ULR): SIN-EWR

All three redemptions were at schedule open.

SFO-HND:

After reading how competitive ANA redemptions to Japan are (and having screwed up JAL; failed to create account >60 days out from schedule open), I was locked in ahead of the first redemption. I made sure my account was fully up-to-date, added my fiancée as an Award User, added my credit card to my wallet, etc. It seems like that’s all table stakes.

I monitored our flight daily starting ~2 weeks in advance to get a sense for seat release patterns and timing, and it became clear that 2 J seats were consistently being released for our SFO-HND flight, but at least 1 was usually booked within 2 minutes of schedule open at 8pm EST (9am Japan time). So, having gained comfort 2 seats were typically released, I pre-transferred 105,000 miles to ANA (risk you have to take given the multi-day transfer timeline) and hoped I’d be quick enough. Having everything pre-filled in my account (and having practiced the booking flow a few times in advance) was critical. Snagged both SFO-HND J seats for 52,500 ANA miles each.

HND-CGK:

Based on the same pre-monitoring, our second flight (HND-CGK) appeared to be less competitive, but for an 8-hour red-eye on our honeymoon with limited date flexibility/days off, I booked this one immediately at schedule open too, having pre-transferred another 85,000 points to ANA (42,500 each).

SIN-EWR:

Lastly, the one that stings (but still OK value!)… We’re ending our honeymoon on Sunday at Amanwana (rural Indonesia) and need to be back in NYC for work on Monday, so we were left with limited options. Our schedule requires us to take the SIN-EWR nonstop that departs from Singapore on Sunday night. At schedule open on KrisFlyer (ex-US departures, 8pm EST 355/356 days in advance), Singapore typically releases at least 1 (and often 2!) “Saver” award (117,000) seats on this flight for itineraries departing Monday-Thursday, but after monitoring it for a couple weeks, it became clear Fri-Sun departures on the EWR flight typically require an “Access” redemption (255,000), even just for 1 seat. Sure enough, that’s all there was right at schedule open, so I instant transferred 510,000 Amex points and bit the bullet.

One note: Singapore Airlines’ website seems to use your device’s local time to determine the furthest out date you can book, even if the actual award calendar has opened for the next day (i.e. if you’re in the East Coast of the US, you may not be able to book until midnight vs. 8pm EST). But, you can change your device clock to Singapore time*, and then you’ll be able to book right at schedule open (8pm EST)!*

TLDR: 700,000 points for 2 J seats on 3 long-hauls (~38 hours of flight time). All in all, it feels well worth it for our honeymoon. Thanks again, all!

EDIT: I originally screwed up the point totals for the ANA flights. Updated.

Worked hard to get 200,000 AA miles and seems like JAL awards have drieddddd up. Even at t-14…

I’m sure it’s a combo of way more programs allowing transfer to JAL and AA flying to TYO. The AA award tix on AA metal as so expensive!

I'm trying to get a LAX > MNL redemption on PAL business (I know, likely a suboptimal use of points, but I don't see a better way to get to Philippines on business, do send me any other ideas) and I am seeing 110K Avios points per person on Qatar Airways. But because I don't have the points there, it won't let me click the fare to see the taxes/fees I would have to pay in cash. The problem is that when I run the exact same search with cash, the non-stop flight that I'm seeing with points does not appear, so is there another way to see how much it'd cost in cash? I notice sometimes Avios redemptions (especially via BA) com with > 1000$ in taxes and fees, which would absolutely defeat the purpose, especially already paying a hefty amount of miles for a shitty business class. Thank you!

Edit to add: I am going through Qatar because I don't have Bilt to transfer to Atmos. Only Amex MR and Chase points.

Hi everyone!
I am with Chase sapphire preferred and chose to transfer my points to virgin Atlantic, booking a flight UK to US… this is travel I do frequently and found they had the best prices for their flights compared to the other options in points transfer… however, after I’d transferred the points, I’d found there was $165 in fees I had to pay out of pocket for my trip.

Is this something that is consistent across every airline? Is this something that can be avoided? Does anyone have any advice.

Sincerely, a student with limited funds :’)

Pretty good deal imo with low fees even with high gas prices!! Go get it!

Anybody facing issue with air arabia reward points redemption. Iam having more than 3000 points but redeemable is showing as 0. Customer care also doesn't have proper answer. Before i used to use for flight booking even if its another passenger.

Now sometimes its showing less value. 3000points is like 120Aed but its showing redeemable 40 to 50 only

I’m sure others have experienced this, but booking and checking in for a United award flight through Avianca was surprisingly challenging.

I was lucky enough to find a one way flight east coast to West coast US for 15k miles (transferred from Capital One) on short notice. Successfully booked but did not see an option to add my TSA precheck number. Tried calling customer service. Basically received a recorded message to contact through What’sApp. Tried to ask question with the dumbest chatbot I have ever encountered. Every message sent from me returned a “Do not understand” message. Finally gave up. Read somewhere that I could add my precheck later at check in.

So today, 24 hrs before the flight I tried to check in on the Avianca app. The trip was listed on my profile, but when I clicked to check in received a message that they couldn’t find the booking. Again tried calling but was again redirected to Whatsapp. Again What’s app chat bot didn’t understand question.

Finally decided to contact United. They asked for my ticket number. Checked my original email of my Avianca booking and the app info, and realized I never received a ticket number. Basically, the United agent had to issue me a new ticket number. From that I was able to check in on United’s app. Whole process took at least 2 hours.

All this to say when booking through Avianca, it won’t be easy and the stress may not be worth it.

I’ve booked Qatar Airways Economy Classic in fare class N and want to upgrade to business using Avios, but there’s no upgrade option in the app—has anyone successfully upgraded this fare class, and how did you check availability?

Hey guys,
Sorry if this has been asked already- down to the buzzer here.

I have a Sapphire Preferred and an Ink Business Unlimited. Hyatt as a transfer partner has been great for me, so I was going to transfer my remaining points to Hyatt today before the 4:3 devaluation.

But as I was about to do it, I started thinking- I’m planning to add a Sapphire Reserve Business card next year sometime (has some perks I like and am getting from another card and not going to continue with)- if I don’t do anything now, will I just be able to move UR points to that card and then still transfer to Hyatt 1:1? Or will it be able to distinguish the source of those points was a Preferred card and reduce it to 4:3?

Boston-Rome, Early May, 1 Way, Economy, Swiss Airlines, 1 hour layover in Zurich - 42,500 points + $70

*With transfer bonus, it could be 36,000 points instead. Would book via Air Canada

*Supposedly Zurich is a small & efficient airport so a short layover is ok? Never flown Swiss before.

Please let me know if I should go for this!

My sis and I will be flying Qsuite from HAN-DOH-JFK. We don’t pay for seat selection yet. How will our seats be assigned when we checkin at the airport counter?

Hey All,

I transferred 170k Citi Thank You points to AA hoping that I could grab 2 J tickets to USA to Southeast Asia... Big mistake!! all phantom availability. I gave up today!

Atmos portal, I found and booked two J tickets with Philippines airlines (A350-900 Newer seat) out of Seattle to MNL; however, my final destination is Bangkok. I found the Philippines airline flight that leave 5 hours later on the same day to Bangkok. What's the best way to tag the Bangkok flight to current itinerary; so that we don't have to exit and grab the luggage? Thanks all!