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I stumbled upon an interesting data point
The first time I found that British Airways shows Japan Airlines award inventory before JAL shows it on its own website was last December when I was booking return flights from Southeast Asia. I found that the typical pattern of JAL award inventory was consistent ( I’ll describe in more detail below ), but when the JAL website should start showing if a seat was available, the site wasn’t refreshing it’s inventory. Instead, I found that there was some sort of lag between what the JAL award search engine would show as availability, and the award releasing algorithm that actually releases the seat. In order to see what the inventory looks like during this lag, you can use British Airways search engine to find availability. Lemme show you.
Japan Airlines updates their award inventory at specific times. For this search we’re looking for Sept 9th in 1st class. I checked on Aug 25th in LA around 6pm for flights on September 9th.
You can see when the inventory was released. Middle of the night, Japan Time.
A quick refresher – Basically JAL releases space in the following ways:
- Random award avail outside of 14 days prior to departure
- At 14 days, if 2+ seats are for sale, either one seat will become available or multiple seats for award booking .
- If only 1 or 2 seats are currently occupied in your desired cabin, likelihood is 2 seats will be released.
- They will release seats until just 1 is left in the cabin
- If you book one award seat and 2+ still remain, within a day or two another seat will typically be released
- If only 1 seat remains it will normally be blocked( for an elite, etc) and JAL stops showing award inventory 5 days before departure. There are some work-a-rounds, but for all intents and purposes this is the pattern.
If you keep a close eye on the roll out of awards you’ll see the pattern on JAL’s own website.
You’ll notice that September 9th has a grey diamond whereas Sept 8th has a blue diamond. The day before this search, September 8th had a seat available, and apparently someone took it or someone booked a revenue ticket and it pulled the award inventory back – either way there isn’t a seat to book. The blue diamond indicates that there are seats available, and JAL is actively determining whether they will release one of those seats or not to award inventory.
The grey diamond indicates that there aren’t any seats available for award booking. However, there’s a difference between the grey diamond being within the 14 day timeframe and outside it. If it’s outside the window they aren’t working on releasing the inventory, and there could be seats released within the 14 day window. If the grey diamond is within the 14 day window there aren’t any seats avail, and basically you’re SOL.
However, we are within the 14 day timeframe, so it should indicate whether they are working on a seat, or if one is available. There should be a blue diamond at the very least.
It is possible that it that the grey diamond is indicating that no seats are available. I checked the seat map and found that there are 3 open seats in First. This means that the table should indicate open seats with a blue diamond.
However, when you go to the BA website and search the availability at the same time. It shows a seat available.
This same exact thing happened to me in December when I was aggressively tracking award avail on JAL. BA showed the seat as released, JAL did not. Both times when I called in to AA to book, I was able to snag the seat. The BA site wasn’t showing phantom inventory, but rather was picking up information during the lag of JAL’s own internal systems.
This bit of info helped me land another 2 seats in JAL first class. BYAH!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card went through a major refresh in 2026 adding new bonus categories, travel protections, statement credits, and remains one of the best travel starter cards in the market. It earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott. Note that Hyatt is now a 4:3 transfer partner
Welcome Offer
Earn 100,000 bonus points after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Earn
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- NEW ACCELERATED EARN CATEGORY: 3x points on gas and EV charging
- NEW ACCELERATED EARN CATEGORY: 3x points on vacation homes at top brands
- Cardmembers will earn 3x points on vacation homes at these top brands: Airbnb, Vrbo, Plu Guide, HomeAway, Homestay.com and Vacasa.
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 2x on all other travel
- 1x on everyday purchases
- 5x points on Lyft rides Earn 5x total points on eligible Lyft rides including ride share, bike and scooter rides and subscription and membership products through September 30, 2027.
- 5x total points on Peloton equipment Earn 5x total points on eligible Peloton equipment and accessory purchases over $150 through December 31, 2027.
Benefits and Credits
- $100 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- NEW: $120 Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or NEXUS fee credit Cardmembers will receive one statement credit of up to $120 every four years as reimbursement for the application fee charged to the card.
- NEW: Complimentary Apple TV subscription for one year
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Complimentary DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees & lower service fees for a min. of one year when you activate by 12/31/27. Plus, a $10 promo each month on non-restaurant orders
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is great starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Chase Ink Business Cash® , Chase Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into the Sapphire Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee remains quite low at $95 a year and if you use the $100 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠ you’ll wipe out that annual fee every year. It has great bonus categories and other useful statement credits to enhance your travel.
One thing that is a bummer is Chase lowered the transfer ratio to World of Hyatt from 1:1 to 4:3.
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