JAL will introduce JAL Original Aroma to its lounges across Japan progressively from September 20 2013. Image by Japan Airlines.

Japan Airlines (JAL) has developed two JAL original fragrances called JAL Original Aroma and will progressively roll them out to its lounges across Japan from September 20 2013. The JAL Original Aroma oils are blended by fragrance and spatial rendition expert Ms. Midori Magishima and professional aroma oil blender Ms. Chihiro Murai from Promotool.

Japan Airlines (JAL) is running a campaign to encourage its Japan region JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) members to travel internationally on JAL and connect onto one of the oneworld carriers. Japan region members who have registered for the campaign prior to the trip and travel on eligible routes with eligible fares will have a chance to be one of the 1,000 lucky winners to receive 2,500 JMB miles!

[Updated with English link of priority award flights and comments at the end] promised, Japan Airlines (JAL) has provided us yet another update on JAL Mileage Project 2012/JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) today. And as expected, this is a relatively small announcement targeted mainly to Japan region members (you could tell when there was no announcements coming soon on March 14 2012 on the English page right :P). The three JMB program enhancements are:


1. Award redemption priority on popular resort routes
2. Extra partners for non-flight award redemptions
3. WAON enhancement specific to JCB cardholders

Japan Airlines (JAL) and IAG's British Airways (BA) have agreed to form a joint business between Japan and Europe. They have filed for the antitrust immunity (ATI) application with the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and the European Union (EU) so that once approved they can start coordinate their flight schedules and fares on flights between Japan and the EU.

Looks like Japan Airlines (JAL) is also having the double miles campaign on its Japan-Asia flights just like American Airlines (AA) does. You will earn 2 times the flight miles if you travel on eligible classes on JAL and AA flights between Japan and Asia. Registration prior to your flight is required.

JAL and China Eastern China-Japan network (Source: JAL Press Release)

Japan Airlines (JAL) and China Eastern Airlines (MU) will expand their existing codesharing agreement from October 8 2011 to cover ALL of their flights between China and Japan. This will add Yantai to JAL's Japan-China network, and add Shizuoka, Okayama and Nagasaki on the Japan side. JAL and MU together operates 386 weekly flights on 42 routes between China and Japan. Reservations and sales of the newly added codeshare flights will start on September 27 2011. Below are the schedule of the new codeshare flights.

Last year Japan Airlines (JAL) ran a couple of birthday related campaigns for the JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) members residing in Japan. One of them is to give out free domestic upgrade coupons for JMB members to use around their birthdays. JAL announced today that they will continue this campaign through 2011. Registration is required and JMB members whose birthdays are in January can register now. Below is the detail of the upgrade campaign (copied from my last year's post :p).

Japan Airlines have been running two discounted upgrade campaigns in parallel for a while. I had a hard time figuring out what the differences are because one of the campaigns is for JAL Mileage Bank members in Japan only and therefore of course was only available in Japanese (Hopefully JAL will update their English site for this campaign too). After exchanging a couple of messages with a JAL traitor (you know who you are LOL), I finally figured out what the other discounted upgrade campaign is about. And guess what, JAL is extending that campaign till March 2011 (this is not a typo!)

Remember the "Let's do Something" movement back in September when Japan Airlines employees and CEO handed out flyers on the street? JAL employees did it again but the difference this time is JAL retirees joined them :)

Japan Airlines has yet another campaign to attract more people to fly with them and redeem more miles. JMB Japan region members who fly on eligible routes with eligible fares for 10 times can redeem award tickets at a discounted rate. Looks like the campaign is targeting at the resort routes.

Japan Airlines is extending the Super Discounted Upgrade Promotion till the end of the year (at least for the JMB Japan members).

The younger employees of Japan Airlines have initiated a "Let's Do Something" movement to save JAL. In response to this, JAL has decided to do something-to distribute flyers on the street LOL

Once again, Japan Airlines extends the bonus Fly On Point (FOP) campaign which they have been running since April 1 2009. Japan JMB members can enjoy this campaign until the end of year and has a better chance to qualify as a JAL most frequent flyers (aka elite members).

Japan Airlines has started a customer service to assistant passengers in Japan to make a reservation online and to do web check-in. With this new service, the JAL customer service agent will be able to take control on your computer and show you step by step on how to perform these two functions for both domestic and international flights. You will see a big yellow/orange arrow showing you what the JAL agent is doing. For details of this service and screenshots with big arrow, you can visit JAL Japan website (Japanese only, in case you don't read Japanese, just click the banner at the bottom of the page and choose the third tab to see screenshots)

Update: maybe it's called Sky Navigation...that's probably the same Japanese only service referred on this page.

Guess which airlines is the best according to Japanese passengers? Japan Airlines? Nope! JAL is not even the second on the list :(

What an "attractive" campaign. To celebrate the first anniversary of HKG-HND route, If you join a package tour to go to Japan in Hong Kong with the participating travel agencies AND you fly on JAL, you will get 1 case of JAL cup noodles FREE! That's 15 of them. That's not cheap stuff, they are selling for USD55 for 2 cases and JAL only serve cup noodles in premium cabins LOL

Source: JAL Hong Kong (Chinese only)

Japan Airlines has updated its website to announce the cancellation of the planned strike on June 17-19 2009. ALL flights will be operated as normal. That's a relief. A strike is the last thing they need under the current economy.

Source: JAL Japan

Japan Airlines is running a campaign in Japan offering its JMB members as much as 63% off the required mileage for upgrade awards to North America and Europe. This is probably to match ANA's latest upgrade campaign.

Japan Airlines has included a new fare search feature on the Japanese version of their Japan region website (I think they added this back in April). You can now click the search by fare tab to do your fare search on JAL domestic flights. It will then automatically display the flights according to the ticket price instead of schedule.

If you don't like the boring reservation tab above, there is a more graphical step-by-step reservation page for you too. You can search for your flights by answering a couple of easy questions. There are pictures to help you understand what's going on. They will then make a search to find the lowest fare that meet your requirements. I especially like how they put a child and baby head next to the number of child and infant options respectively. I believe this is once again their universal design concepts to improve user experience.

Not sure when Japan Airlines updated the English version of their Japan region website, but I just noticed a cool new feature on their domestic reservation page. JAL now include a new interactive reservation interface for their domestic bookings.