If you're reading this article, you're probably having trouble figuring out how to find those elusive business class flights to Japan. With travel still high in demand, everyone and their mother wants to visit Japan these days, making it harder and harder to find those incredible award opportunities.
In today's guide article, we'll explore the ideal times to look for Japan award flights, all the best award deals to get to Japan, and tools you can use to expedite your search.
What's The Ideal Time To Look For Japan Award Flights?
Given the popularity of Japan business class flights, it is imperative to begin your search as far out as you can. Literally planning for these trips at least 11-12 months in advance will save you a lot of strife and enable you to score some of these hard to find awards. Airlines will typically release award availability in a pretty standardized cadence (with some variability here and there).
For instance, to book the ever popular Japan Airlines business class, you can use American or Alaska miles. Both release partner availability 331 days in the future. Typically, Japan Airlines will release at least a seat to book, but that's definitely not the case for all flights.
Alternatively, if you are looking for a business class flight to Japan sometime within the next ~10-11 months, you may either have to play the waiting game or look into "close in bookings." Outside of close in bookings less than 14 days before departure, there's no predictable fashion in which seats are released 1-10 months before departure. We'll talk more about this situation later on.
Close In Bookings ("T14, T7, T3, T1")
Close in bookings are not for the weary. These types of bookings require you to be comfortable with some degree of risk in that you won't be able to book your desired flight until 14, 7, 3, and even 1 day before departure. Why is this the case?
Award availability is typically a dynamic process. Airlines will typically prefer to sell seats for cash if possible, meaning they will hold off as long as they can before releasing seats that can be bookable with points. Based on award release algorithms and predictions about revenue, an airline will traditionally start releasing more award seats as they get closer to the date of departure (since it becomes less likely for new seats to be purchased).
For instance, if an airline has a maximum cabin of 40 passengers in business class, they might predict that they will only be able to sell 50% of those seats for revenue during the off season. That would (in theory) leave a maximum of 20 seats that can be booked with points. And maybe 1 day before departure, they decide it's time to release everything leftover since it's very unlikely for someone to book a last minute revenue flight.
So if you're struggling to find availability anywhere between 1-10ish months right now, your best play might unfortunately be to just watch for new award availability less than 14 days before departure.
The Best Point Deals To Japan & How To Find Them
North America, Europe, Australia <> Japan On ANA Business/First Class: 45k Virgin Atlantic Miles
This remains as one of the best award deals in all of travel, even after its devaluation in 2023. When flying between Australia, Canada, or the Western US (e.g. SFO, LAX), you can fly on ANA's incredible business class for just 45,000 Virgin miles in each direction. Flying from the East Coast (e.g. JFK, ORD) runs just 47,500 Virgin miles, which is still just as awesome.
If you're looking to up your experience, you could even fly on ANA’s first class product for just 72.5–85k Virgin points each direction as well. For context, ANA’s first class can sometimes sell for upwards of $20,000 roundtrip from the East Coast, meaning you can really get a lot out of your hard-earned points with this redemption.
Unfortunately, you cannot simply search for ANA awards on Virgin Atlantic’s website. To make things more complicated, you have to call Virgin Atlantic directly and speak to an agent for them to book the award flight.
To find Virgin Atlantic award availability, the easiest way is to check on United Airlines, LifeMiles, or Australia Velocity's websites. You need to start off by searching on these airline's websites to see if you can find award space that ANA is releasing to partners. If at least 2 other ANA partners say they can book the flight online, then you should be able to book the flight with Virgin Atlantic
After finding potential availability, you'll need to call Virgin Atlantic to confirm it directly. Thankfully, Virgin Atlantic agents are pretty competent.
Here's a step-by-step process on how to do this:
- Give Virgin Atlantic a call at 1 (800) 862-8621
- Confirm the award availability with the agent and request the award booking to be held for 24-48 hours
- Transfer your points to Virgin Atlantic
- Call Virgin Atlantic again at 1 (800) 862-8621 to pay for your booking
- Note the ANA Record Locator and navigate to ANA's reservation page to access and edit your booking
Virgin Atlantic also only has an award reinstatement fee of $50 USD, so the consequences of booking and holding a flight are pretty low.
You can accumulate Virgin Atlantic miles pretty easily, since they are transfer partners with pretty much every major card issuer out there.
North America <> Japan On Japan Airlines Business Class: 60k American Airlines Miles
American Airlines is the last bastion in the points world featuring some old, pre-2023 (when many point devaluations started happening) pricing for many of its partner flights. Among the US carriers, they are the only option left where you can book a fully refundable ticket to Japan for just 60,000 miles + $5.60 in taxes.
Given just how good of a deal this is, it can be particularly tricky to find award availability. AA allows you to start booking award flights 331 days in the future, so if you're looking far ahead, you could easily scoop one of these flights as soon as they release. However, if you're looking anywhere between 1–10 months before the flight, you might be out of luck—finding availability can be a huge pain since the initial award drops have been booked.
However, if you're willing to be flexible, Japan Airlines typically releases more seats starting 14 days before departure. Furthermore, with American Airline miles, you could book seats on Japan Airlines economy class with little penalty—even partner bookings are fully refundable. You could then wait for a business class seat to open, hold it, and then cancel your existing economy booking to book the coveted JAL seat.
However, if you're willing to be flexible, Japan Airlines typically releases more seats starting 14 days before departure. Furthermore, with American Airline miles, you could book seats on Japan Airlines economy class with little penalty—even partner bookings are fully refundable. You could then wait for a business class seat to open, hold it, and then cancel your existing economy booking to book the coveted JAL seat.
Getting American Airline miles is not particularly easy, since you can only get them via cobranded Citi cards and by spending on various AA channels. While Bilt is still technically transfer partners with AA, there is a high opportunity cost here, since Bilt has traditionally featured large transfer bonuses to other popular programs like Air France, Air Canada, and Virgin Atlantic.
North America <> Japan On OneWorld Partner Business Class: 60-75k Alaska Miles
While Alaska Airlines recently devalued their partner awards, there are still some high value opportunities here and there. Alaska Airlines prices its partner awards based on the following award chart:
For flights flying between 5,001–7,000 miles, Alaska prices those awards at just 75,000 miles each way. This can make for some incredible redemptions, even without leveraging Alaska Airline's free stopover program! Alaska prices its awards nowadays based on the cumulative distance traveled. So if you want to add a stopover after arriving in Tokyo, just make sure the total flight distance doesn't exceed 7,000 miles or you'll be subject to the next price band.
Interestingly, Seattle to Tokyo just cuts in under the 5,001 mile mark, so you'll only pay 60,000 Alaska miles for that flight.
Unfortunately, booking partner awards on Alaska Airlines is just as stringent as booking on American Airlines. You really need to book these flights ~11-12 months in advance when they release drop 331 days in the future. Otherwise, your best chance to find availability is looking at 30, 14, 7, etc. days before departure.
Using SkyView, you can set alerts to monitor for any new award availabilities as they come up—that way, you don't have to constantly watch for anything new.
Similar to American, getting Alaska miles isn't as easy as other programs. Alaska's only transfer partner is with Bilt, and you can typically only get Alaska miles via the credit card or by actually flying on Alaska.
North America <> Japan On ANA Business Class: 100-110k ANA Miles Roundtrip
Surprisingly, you can also get good value when booking ANA direct using ANA's own miles. Even with ANA's devaluation set to come on April 18, 2024, being able to fly roundtrip ANA business class for just about ~100k ANA miles is fantastic.
Unfortunately, one of the major issues with booking direct with ANA is that you need to book roundtrip. If you've dabbled in points at all, you know that it can be already incredibly difficult to book one way; nonetheless, booking roundtrip ANA business class can be impossible. Since the deal is so good, seats are constantly waitlisted/scooped up, making it very difficult to find award availability on the days you might want it.
It's usually best to find ANA availability as soon as it releases ~355 days in advance. However, since you must book roundtrip, this can prove difficult since you'd want to book your outbound flight literally the moment ANA releases availability. One fancy trick is that ANA allows for changes as long as the route doesn't change; that means you could book and hold a roundtrip itinerary and then wait for new availability to popup for your return on the exact same route.
Otherwise, if you wish to cancel, the only cost is 3,000 ANA miles—which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't too bad.
Accumulating ANA miles is only possible through AMEX, which is their sole transfer partner.
The Best Tools To Use To Find Award Availability To Japan
Roame
Both the free and paid Roame products do a pretty good job at accelerating your searches so that you can find those elusive Japan deals. Roame will do a lot of the hard work and search across all the major airlines for you so you can effectively determine whether or not there is availability on your intended date of departure.
For instance, let's say we're trying to find an ANA business/first class seat we can book using Virgin Atlantic points. If we prompt SkyView to search for USA to Tokyo flights in the month of April using United Airline miles, we can then in theory confirm that same availability with Virgin Atlantic.
And in these results, we can easily see that ANA results are showing for various dates and times from HNL. We can also see other reasonable options from SFO via United Polaris. Since that ANA flight is bookable with United miles, it should also be bookable via Virgin Atlantic. You would need to follow the steps in this guide and book accordingly.
Roame also excels at finding uncommon routes to Tokyo. For example, if you aren't based out of a major US airport like JFK, EWR, SFO, LAX, etc. you can still search for results via Roame to see if there are any flights that would allow you to get to Japan all on one ticket. For this, I would advise against using SkyView since it doesn't do live search. Instead, live search does a fantastic job for this particular use case.
If you're looking 1-11 months in advance, you can also set alerts on SkyView to monitor for any new award openings. This is particularly useful because it means you don't have to constantly watch for award openings as they come about. Alerts can be an incredibly powerful feature that can save a lot of time and effort throughout the entire process.
Alaska Airlines Website
Surprisingly, Alaska's website is actually a pretty good way to get a monthly view of award availability.
If you navigate to Alaska's website and cue an award flight search, you'll initially be greeted with various options for that particular week. However, if you click "View by calendar" in the top right, you can get an accurate view of the land for any individual month (at least, for OneWorld flights).
Once you then filter results by business class, then you can see all the upcoming availability for OneWorld airlines. This is particularly useful to cross verify results you might see on Roame.
Conclusion
Booking flights to Japan in business class is difficult because it is currently one of the hottest travel destinations around. While it is typically recommended to start looking ~11-12 months in advance, you're still not completely out of luck thanks to tools like Roame and you could also just do a close in booking. There are several avenues you can use to book these flights, but with some persistence and luck, you may be able to find the business/first class flight of your dreams.
