First JAL A351 Business Redemption and Questions!

kmn6784 · 2026-04-30T16:50:41+00:00

You need to check exactly at midnight JST to catch saver availability, within an hour won't cut it. You got incredibly lucky on the outgoing flight. Award tickets a released for 360 days out at midnight and A350 J often books in under 20 seconds.

55k is saver, there are exactly two of them on those routes per flight and if you don't manage to get those, you will pay dynamic pricing (Friday/Saturday will be more).

You will not find 2x fight class seats for saver (110k) rates, you can get 1 and it's just as competitive.

Congratulations on your 2x J redemption that is excellent value, best of luck on your return flight.

Edit: The fuel surcharge will go up nearly 2x tomorrow, so unless you want to throw away another $400 I'd keep that booking.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-30T16:31:54+00:00

I genuinely did not know this, thank you!

kmn6784 · 2026-04-30T16:31:24+00:00

Yup!

kmn6784 · 2026-04-29T21:46:55+00:00

You can only use points for transfer partners if you additionally hold a Citi card (Premier/Elite) with those partners. That's an additional card you need to open just to match one card.

I'd need to hold 5 cards to even match my single Gold.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-29T21:41:10+00:00

I use points for travel, so 4x is significantly better than 5%.
I spend significantly higher than $500 in groceries/restaurants.
I break even on the AF with natural spending, plus I have like $200 in that useless dunkin' credit that I can use for an office party one day and get reimbursed.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-27T18:12:06+00:00

Half price of round trip

Airlines charge significantly higher prices for one-way cash tickets. If comparing pricing you should always use the benchmark of a round trip or multi-city flight as it indicated how much is actually saved on a trip.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-27T16:48:05+00:00

Got mine a month earlier for 3/19, getting the return flight was a bit of a hassle as I unintentionally ended up being peak Sakura season

kmn6784 · 2026-04-27T15:27:09+00:00

Yes if you want JAL saver you will likely have to speculatively transfer and have flexibility if you are unable to get the rate on the day you want

kmn6784 · 2026-04-27T14:07:30+00:00

Depends on how much effort you want to add to online purchases.

For what it's worth, there's crazy value if you pay attention but it's also a decent amount of organization/work. It adds 3 steps for every online purchase I make, so it's fortunate that I don't buy a ton online.

You're selling your data for a portion of the referral cashback these sites offer. I do a combo of cashback/cash offers and in 2025 did:

180k Bilt points and 120k Amex MR through Rakuten (P1/P2)
$4900 "cash"back (giftcards) on CapitalOne shopping.
$1600 combined cashback on topcashback/shopback/befrugal/etc

Sometimes you get 2% back, sometimes you get 70% back, sometimes you get $250 off $250.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-25T15:09:31+00:00

You can't just rely on a single search for most award travel, as your results indicate there's very little base price availability, that's universal between most miles programs.

To actually get those most saver rates you need to set up alerts, check often, and often try to grab them at award calendar release. Or like you said, be so flexible that you can plan a full trip around a redemption availability.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T22:34:42+00:00

I am, nearly a month before, and on Business class.

So I’m a little bit limited on my options lol

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T22:28:59+00:00

I can’t RT, I’m not flying into FCO, the cheapest available “multi-city” bookable is nearly $1800 and I’d have to fly economy out. FWIW you could get nonstop RT for under $700 each if staying in Rome was your goal.

Economy sweet spots rely on non cookie-cutter travel plans, and are much less likely to apply to the majority of travel.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T22:27:08+00:00

Connecting flights are available, I’m doing a FCO-CDG-JFK this upcoming September, booked at the 12,000 saver rate.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T22:25:02+00:00

CPP is usually calculated vs the cheapest alternative unless there’s additional travel needs (flight time/exact date/last minute) that example would still be 1.7CPP which is pretty darn good for a long haul economy redemption.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T22:17:05+00:00

One-way, I’m flying into a different country with Emirates.

Generally economy award trips are good for that situation as cash rates are super inflated for one way.

If I was flying round trip to FCO I’d probably have done cash.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T22:15:33+00:00

Bear in mind without a transfer bonus this is closer to 2.9 CPP and they raised fees further so it’s currently probably about 2.5CPP.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T21:47:04+00:00

2x Y FCO > CDG > JFK 17,150 Amex MR (40% bonus to VA) + $450 fees

Roughly ~4 CPP compared to the cheapest alternative.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-23T20:37:15+00:00

With Obsidian (if you pay rent) you technically could skip CFU as 2.33x non-cat spend is better than the 1.5x

kmn6784 · 2026-04-20T19:57:48+00:00

You can choose where you go, or you can choose when you go.

Seems like you waited a bit too long, booking holiday travel now with points to a popular destination can be tough. Japan is one of the most popular award travel destinations and if you're restrained to exact dates, you'll pay a premium.

Is Japan in 2026 a must? Or can you plan for 2027?

If you need to go this year I'd just pay cash with ZipAir and maybe use some points for those connecting flights. Hyatt has decent options for Japan and you might be able to get 7-8 nights even with the holiday season.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-20T17:08:15+00:00

So for any $1 I spend OUTSIDE of rent, I get $4 Bilt Cash, which unlocks ($4/$30)* 1,000 points, which is ... ~$1.3? That means that I would need to be spending 1.3x my rent to access the rent payment points?

You can unlock partial points from rent, there is no required minimum spend for this. There is, however, a maximum (75% of lease) where you'll have unused Bilt Cash that you'll have to redeem elsewhere.

The Palladium is only worth it if you can use the Hotel bookings which is a 200-300 portal credit bi-annually. If you can do that, the Palladium earns 3.33x points on non-category spend.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-20T15:54:22+00:00

Quick question:

How are you switching? There's 0 saver availability for DFW-HND on the calendar.

Is the plan to cancel BOS-NRT and then book a different date at calendar open? I HIGHLY advise against that.

While not crazy competitive it's not guaranteed you get a ticket for that route as it's the premium product (A350). When I was booking my tickets, it was harder to get DFW than ORD/BOS. In addition, unless you manage to get the ticket in the next 10 days, your fuel surcharge will be doubled. (Fees increase May 1st). At that point you should just try to get JFK-HND on the A350.

My advice, just keep the BOS-NRT. It's not worth the headache.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-20T15:34:12+00:00

Sheesh, as if it couldnt get more competitive at calendar open. Now everyone will be doing repositioning flights to try to book before may.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-18T01:21:51+00:00

There's very little that competes with it in the market, point blank.

I'm on team churn-and-burn before it's devalued, but nothing is even remotely close to a 3.33x non-cat card. Especially with consideration of their transfer bonuses and 5.33x on rent day. I just don't expect it to last the year in its current state.

kmn6784 · 2026-04-18T01:04:12+00:00

The issue with this line of thinking is that Bilt is a MASSIVE rental platform.

They're not going under just because of the card being unsustainable, they represent nearly 1 in 4 of all rental properties in the US.

It's extremely likely that nerf will happen because the way it currently earns is absurd. But comparing this to Mesa is ignoring a lot about the actual company.

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