Hey Reader,
I'm pretty freaking excited because I just booked round trip flights to Japan for 2027 (on points! in business class! ...well for half the itinerary anyways) ๐
One of the best pieces of advice you'll hear in the points and miles world is to stay flexible, and I have certainly found that to be key advice for myself and my trip planning clients.
Now, like every other millennial, my husband and I knew we wanted to travel to Japan in the near future. However, after flying in economy to New Zealand, we did not want to cross the Pacific Ocean in economy EVER again. Basically, here were the things that were important to us for this theoretical trip to Japan:
- Not flying economy, and ideally, business or first class
- Traveling sometime in the fall (when it's not extremely hot)
- Direct flight to Tokyo from the lower 48 states
- And that's about it
The things we didn't care about:
- The exact dates of the trip
- What U.S. city we flew in or out of
And what else does a travel obsessed girl like myself do with a rainy Sunday afternoon? Well plan a trip an entire year away, of course. I started to do my research on:
- Which airlines fly direct from the U.S. to Tokyo;
- Which airlines are transfer partners of the credit card points and miles I already have; and
- How far ahead of time those airlines release award seats.
Based on my research, it seemed like booking through Japan Airlines (JAL) via transfer of Capital One miles was going to be my best option. I like to plan my trips relatively far in advance, so I started with simply searching the Japan Airlines website each day (give or take) in early October at the exact time that award seats were released. I started to see that there were multiple route options with direct flights to Tokyo from the U.S. in business class for 55k JAL miles.
From there, I made sure I knew how many Capital One miles I would need to transfer to snag those tickets when they were released. And one day, I ran my search, and there they were at the exact release time - two business class seats from San Francisco to Tokyo for 55k JAL miles each. So I booked them!
But now came the tricky part... I would need to do the same process for flights home, and dates did matter somewhat at that point. Did you know you could fly direct from Tokyo to Boston??? I didn't, and I really wanted to get seats on that plane home about 2 weeks after arriving in Japan.
I ran similar searches each day ahead of time preparing to book on my preferred return travel date, and sadly I was not seeing any great deals coming back into the U.S. BUT on the exact date I wanted, at the moment they were released, were 2 premium economy tickets direct from Tokyo to Boston for 40k JAL miles each. Booked!
Did I really want business class? Yes. But the beauty of award bookings is they are generally very easy and/or free to cancel and rebook if something better comes along. So I will continue checking for those business class seats for 55k miles up until my flight takes off. If I was not flexible and simply booked the first seats that popped up in business class, I could have easily spent hundreds of thousands more miles just to get specific dates or cabin.
Anyways, can't wait to visit Japan! A whole year from now ๐
Stay flexible, friends. Talk soon.
And if you live in the U.S., don't forget to VOTE today if you haven't already!
Michelle
P.S. if you want to earn Capital One miles for a future flight to Japan, the Venture card still has an elevated welcome offer of 75k miles PLUS $300 travel credit after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.
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