Business Class to Asia With American Miles Wide Open, No Fuel Surcharges

by Gary Leff

Via One Mile at a Time, there’s fantastic business class award space using American AAdvantqage (or other oneworld airline) miles between Dallas and Tokyo.

Japan Airlines is launching 4 times weekly service (Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Friday in both directions) between Dallas and Tokyo on November 30.

    Dallas – Tokyo operates 11:45am – 4:25pm+1
    Tokyo – Dallas operates 10:55am – 7:20am

I was not aware that there was business class space available. I usually use the British Airways website for searching Japan Airlines award space, and that space is not showing up on BA.com. (The American and Qantas websites do not show JAL space at all.)

You can search for the space on the Japan Airlines website. However, at this moment pretty much every day that the flight operates has two business class awards. So just call American to book.

Cost of award:

  • American charges 50,000 miles each way for US – “Asia 1” (Japan/Korea/Mongolia) business class. If you connect onward to ‘Asia 2’ it’s 55,000 miles. There are no fuel surcharges, and you can connect to Dallas and onward from Tokyo.

  • British Airways charges 90,000 miles each way for just the Dallas – Tokyo segment, and will charge you fuel surcharges.

Since American awards include onward travel from Tokyo to other countries in Asia 1 or Asia 2, you can use this flight to connect to:

China:

Taiwan:

South Korea:

Southeast Asia:

If you with to book a domestic connection intra-Japan, those are available only close-in via AAdvantage (and are supposed to be available only close-in to everybody but you may want to book that portion as a separate ticket through British Airways.

The flight is operated by a Boeing 787-8 with JAL’s new business class product. (The original 787s were delivered with angled business seats — JAL ordered the planes so long ago that lie flat wasn’t even standard yet!)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Gary, would you “be ok” flying on the new 787 business class on JAL, or is it worthwhile to “splurge” and fly on the 777 F ?

  2. Funny about the lie flat. I flew the 787 JAL from san-nrt and was surprised that it was angled.

    Also, interesting how Mongolia is Asia 1 but one world doesn’t fly there.

  3. JAL first class is very good in my opinion and the service is excellent.

    I flew the 787 (both old and new business class). The new seats are really good and all seats (even the windows) have aisle access. They’re staggered ever so slightly so there’s a small aisle to get out around the aisle seat if you’re at the window. A very solid business product I think.

  6. The JL business class seats shown here are the ones featured on that airline’s 777 aircraft. The 787 seats are different – angled lie-flat, not pods.

  7. @Jose I just flew AA51 in F (77W) and while it was a treat, the F cabin wasn’t all that special, the meal service was just OK. The J cabin looks to be the best way to travel, I wouldn’t “splurge” on F on AA..

  8. any good ways to leverage off this deal with a separate award on to Sydney after a week or two in Asia?

  10. @Jose JAL lie flat business is perfectly ok but given American’s pricing is so cheap to get up to F i would spend the extra miles if both were available every time

  11. I never book JAL before, so if i want to fly from the west coast to Ho Chi Minh city. Does JAL offer flight from Sea to SGN? any help would be appreciated thanks in advance

  12. Is putting the tickets on hold safe, or is there a chance they’ll get cancelled before ticketing? I’d like to put a couple flights on hold and then check dates with family.

  13. What about the domestic part? That means what if i’m not living in Dallas, do i need to book a my city to Dallas separately? Thank you.

  14. @Eric these aren’t mistakes, as far as I know – held awards should be fine I think.

    @wenlonz you can add a segment to Dallas in the award with American for no additional miles

  16. If this is the same product as the J I flew HND-SFO this year it really is excellent. AA F will probably give a bit more space, but this seat was very private, bed was good, and excellent JAL service.

  17. I was able to put three tickets on hold but with the connecting flight to New Dehli (Asia 2) agent said I will have to pay 75k miles and not 55k miles. Still not a bad deal I think!

  20. That’s what I thought. Unfortunately, I can’t find any TYO-HKG flights on JL or CX in J when we can go. Oh well, it was worth a shot. I looked on BA and JL award searches.

  21. My question: Wenlonz says:
    September 13, 2015 at 1:40 am
    What about the domestic part? That means what if i’m not living in Dallas, do i need to book a my city to Dallas separately? Thank you.

    @wenlonz you can add a segment to Dallas in the award with American for no additional miles

    My next question is that i need to found out availability for the domestic part in the same level, right?

Comments are closed.