Anyone has been successful to get the Rewards flight from Emirates

[Saanch]

I was looking to redeem an award flight for return ticket to Japan from Australia for 85K Skywards points in J class. I couldn't find any availability, was wondering if anyone in past was successful to get this? any tricks to get this

 

[Mattg]

Are you trying to redeem your Skywards miles for a Qantas flight? How are you searching?

 

[Saanch]

Are you trying to redeem your Skywards miles for a Qantas flight? How are you searching?

Yea I was trying to redeem skywards miles for the JAL flight from SYD-NRT.
I am searching using their advanced search page where there is an option to search on the partner airlines. But nothing comes up.

 

[Mattg]

Yea I was trying to redeem skywards miles for the JAL flight from SYD-NRT.
I am searching using their advanced search page where there is an option to search on the partner airlines. But nothing comes up.

Ah, I see.

When searching on the Emirates website, I assume you're selecting "Book Classic Rewards flight" and "Search partner flights only".

I would suggest searching for JAL award availability on another website first, such as the Qantas or British Airways website. If a flight has J award availability using Qantas points, you *should* also be able to book that seat using Emirates Skywards miles. But as far as I can tell, JAL award availability is not displaying at all on the Emirates website. (I just did a search for seats on a route that has lots of availability, and still got an error message.) So, if there is availability but you can't book online, you might need to call Emirates.

I just had a look for JL SYD-NRT award availability on various dates on the Qantas website, but I couldn't find any. It looks to me like JAL isn't releasing any award availability on this route at the moment. That could also explain why you're having problems.

If you don't mind flying Qantas, I can see a fair bit of J availability on the MEL-HND and BNE-NRT routes for travel later in the year. For example:


Another thing to keep in mind is that you could get an error message if searching for SYD-NRT availability, but there are only flights available from SYD-HND. I believe JAL has switched from Narita to Haneda, so you would need to search SYD-HND on the Emirates website.

Also, I'm not sure where you got the price of 85,000 Skywards miles. According to the JAL award chart on the Emirates website, a SYD-NRT ticket in J would cost 76,000 Skywards miles one-way. So, 152,000 miles for a return ticket.

 

[Saanch]

Thanks @Mattg

I think Skywards changed the partner rewards redemption recently. I have seen few blogs about the Skywards redemption on JAL based on Zones rather than distance.



I couldn't find the above chart on the emirates site anymore instead the distance based one is showing up.

Regarding the JAL availability, I could see the seats available in Oct 2021. Again i can't find that availability in Skywards Classic rewards

 

[Mattg]

Thanks @Mattg

Regarding the JAL availability, I could see the seats available in Oct 2021. Again i can't find that availability in Skywards Classic rewards

If you can see that there is JAL award availability on another website, I would suggest calling Emirates Skywards to book. JAL flights don't seem to be showing on the Emirates website at all, even if there is availability.