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I have 400k avios and 2 cabin upgrade vouchers and wanting to fly business class to japan next year ideally April or May for 2 people
Happy to fly from london or start in another european city and buy a flight before seperately
What is the most efficient way to use points for something like this?
Biz availability to Japan on BA is not great. I have an alert setup on Seatspy and occasionally seats come up so it’s worth lurking there. I booked Premium Economy with a Barclays voucher then called as Biz availability came up to change individual legs.
JAL actually have really good availability, especially in the 2 weeks coming up to the flight, and if you can fly out of Frankfurt there is even more availability – you need to keep checking on ba.com as i can’t see any “SeatSpy” type sites for JAL.
I secured First out, biz back this way with JAL.
Caveats that you can’t use the companion voucher on JAL.
Also, JAL seems to only release 1 F seat a lot of the time, which is tricky if you’re not travelling alone. I actually had to cancel a trip recently because while outbound availability was wide open and seats being added each day, there wasn’t a single JAL flight available to anywhere in Europe over a one week period.You can only use the Barclaycard upgrade vouchers on BA flights departing from the UK. But as noted above, availability to Japan is very limited, and you’ll be very lucky to get anything in cherry blossom season now. It’s a route that you really need to book at T-355 to be sure of availability.
To complicate things even further, to use 2 upgrade vouchers you either have to make 2 separate online bookings, or call BA.
If you have a BAPP 241 voucher, or can get one, that might open up extra availability.
No BA availability to Tokyo in J let alone in F with or without the voucher unless booked at T-355 or 8-9 months when they release extra seats out of regions. All gone within an hour tops. It doesn’t matter really the period and cherry blossom no longer plays importance.
I suggest you look at flying to Delhi/Hong Kong/Singapore then take a flight from there with Avios on JAL. Some availability might open up from Helsinki in January when Finnair officially adopts Avios.
Agree with all of the above. 2 of us travelling, so the strategy is…
Both booked PE flights with Barclaycard Upgrade.
One then changed inbound to Biz when availability came up.
I’ve got First / Biz with JAL (no voucher) booked later.
It’s a palaver and we won’t be on the same plane but flight times are roughly the same so can travel to the airport and visit the lounge together.
Literally anything NOT to be at the back of the plane for 14 hours! 😉
There are 4 CW seats showing on SeatSpy for T-355 right now, plus PE on multiple days. Change plans to travel next autumn, maybe?
There is also an option BA to Beijing/Shanghai and then a short hop to Japan with JAL, ANA or any of the low cost airlines.
There are 4 CW seats showing on SeatSpy for T-355 right now, plus PE on multiple days. Change plans to travel next autumn, maybe?
September is still peak summer in Japan. It’s currently 30+ in Osaka and very very humid. Best to wait till November. It’s also when the autumn foliage season begins and it’s also as beautiful as cherry blossom.
Agree with @meta re-weather. First time in Japan back in summer 2018, never again! We are going there again towards late November so hopefully still some foliage season left. 🙂
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