I know I’ve been writing a lot about my upcoming Round the World trip lately but hey that’s because I’m worrying about it constantly! I currently have a ticket booked in business class routing through Shanghai for March, but I have been waiting (hoping!) for First Class space on either Japan Airlines or Cathay Pacific to open up.
Because I’m that much of a nerd, I have a spreadsheet where I am tracking the number of seats on a variety of dates in February on a variety of routes to either Tokyo or Hong Kong. Here’s what it looked when I checked it on Monday
I had been pretty consistently seeing space open up on Japan Airlines 2 weeks from departure. So on Tuesday, 4 seats opened up on the 2/9 flight from JFK-NRT. Wednesday, I was expecting seats to open up for the 10th, but all day I did not see anything. I don’t particularly care about February 10th, but I’m just looking for patterns so I know when to jump on the seats for the dates I’m actually wanting to fly!
But….all day nothing showed up for the 10th
MASSIVE availability on Japan Airlines
But then tonight I thought I’d check again, and I DID see availability on February 10th in First Class
Sweet! Okay, what about the 11th?
Fast forward to March – and there were 2 First Class seats for my exact dates! I hurried and called and booked them up!
I’m still seeing pretty good availability – here’s 2 seats on JFK-NRT in March
and I was able to find other dates with First Class availability. Okay, so maybe it’s not MASSIVE availability, but compared to what I was seeing a few weeks ago (with exactly ZERO anything further than 14 days out), this is pretty good! If you’re looking to use those AA miles before the mid-March devaluation, now’s the time!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I’ve also been checking every day to change my LGA-ORD-NRT First Class tickets to JFK-NRT. Saw your post this morning and was able to snag 2 F tickets in March, Thanks.
That is awesome! I’m so glad I could help!
I think you mean “two weeks from departure”, not “two weeks from destination.” I sure hope it won’t take you two weeks to reach your destination!! 😉
LOL you are indeed correct 🙂
Would I be able to continue to TPE on the same first class award ticket?
Yes I believe so
TPE would cost you 67.5k instead of 62.5k miles.
I’m currently waiting for HND-SFO to open up, on a weekend in early April. Still nothing…a couple scattered J seats on weekdays in mid-April. Btw you should use the award.flight tool! It’s awesome!! I usually have it check BA’s website for me from April 1-April 14 and it returns all the results within like 1-2 minutes.
Great find Dan! Congratulations!! Curious – which two seats did you pick: middle two, across aisle, or two windows?
I believe we’re in 2D and 2G on the first class flight (it’s a 1-2-1)
Reason I asked is because people have different preferences when it comes to traveling as a couple. In JL F cabin, I actually prefer 2G & K, across the aisle from each other. You not only share the same aisle, you can also easily hop over to each other’s suite and dine together or chat.
In any case, enjoy the 13+ hours of bliss!
Interesting – I’ll have to read up on that.