Best routing for J reward Japan and Korea trip

[Dannyism]

Hi All,

My partner and I are looking at taking a three week trip to Japan and Korea in April 2019 over the Easter/Anzac holidays.

Seoul seems a bit awkward to get to with Oneworld carriers on points. I'm wondering if the best bet is to book a J award Melbourne to Tokyo return, then just book Tokyo to Seoul as an economy paid ticket with any discount carrier. (JAL or QF non-stop ideally, we have about 420k points between us)

Has anyone done this trip before or can make some recommendations? If it is too tricky or inefficient we will just spend two weeks in Japan, but would prefer to combine the two countries in one trip.

Thanks for your help!

 

[junbugging]

Hi All,

My partner and I are looking at taking a three week trip to Japan and Korea in April 2019 over the Easter/Anzac holidays.

Seoul seems a bit awkward to get to with Oneworld carriers on points. I'm wondering if the best bet is to book a J award Melbourne to Tokyo return, then just book Tokyo to Seoul as an economy paid ticket with any discount carrier. (JAL or QF non-stop ideally, we have about 420k points between us)

Has anyone done this trip before or can make some recommendations? If it is too tricky or inefficient we will just spend two weeks in Japan, but would prefer to combine the two countries in one trip.

Thanks for your help!

JL metal now flies out of HND only, I think, so you'd have to do a transfer from NRT (if taking JL from MEL) to HND, which is no big deal. Keeping it all on JL rather than QF+JL would be more efficient from a points perspective since they're on different award charts.

I've also done MEL-HKG-ICN on CX. Probably easier than messing around with a NRT to HND connection. 92k points + AUD222.55 in J.

I think it only costs around $100 one-way on Peach, so it might be best to just consider Korea an add-on and focus mostly on the Japan tickets. If you can handle MEL-BNE in economy, then you can handle NRT/HND-ICN/GMP.

I'd look at CX to/from Seoul in one direction, QF/JL to/from Tokyo in the other, and Peach or some other cheapo option for a one-way between Japan and Korea.

MEL-KUL-ICN on MH is also an option.

 

[Dannyism]

I'd look at CX to/from Seoul in one direction, QF/JL to/from Tokyo in the other, and Peach or some other cheapo option for a one-way between Japan and Korea

Perfect thank you, that's the itinerary I will try to snag when it opens up. So the pricing should be 92k points MEL-HKG-ICN with CX. Then QF or JL HND-MEL should be 70-90k points (off the top of my head).

 

[junbugging]

Perfect thank you, that's the itinerary I will try to snag when it opens up. So the pricing should be 92k points MEL-HKG-ICN with CX. Then QF or JL HND-MEL should be 70-90k points (off the top of my head).

You'd be looking at NRT-MEL. 72k on QF, 84k on JL.

 

[tizey]

Be organised and pray you get a good QF operator that can find JL flights quickly..... Easter may be tricky to score the MEL-NRT J flights as I think they only open 4 of them as awards andnisngenerally a peak time of year - cherry blossoms.

Last May when ours opened up... I missed the NRT-MEL JL flights i wanted as they got snapped up whilst the AA agent as it ticked over 11am said 'nothing available on that date... Mustn't be open.. wait a minute, I can see four seats - let me book two of them for yo...and they're gone'. Got ones the next day so not a huge issue.. but bit frustrating.

Last time booking a non-peak NRT-MEL JL flight it took 4 phone calls to get an agent that knew what they were doing... So yeah. Make sure you have plan b... Which sounds like you do.

 

[Dannyism]

Be organised and pray you get a good QF operator that can find JL flights quickly.....

Oh what ? I though I could book JL online? Or am I gettting mixed up?

Is it JL seats that I can see using the BA search engine ?

My previous J/F redemptions have been with VA and SQ and I think it's showing...

Edit: Never mind I answered my own questions.

I guess I can try to fly into Tokyo, then if I can't get two J seats, swing the itinerary and try to get a seat flying out of Tokyo, that will effectivly give me two shots at it. Then if I add in some flexibility around going the week before Easter vs the week after that should give me quite a few goes at it.