JAL added more partners to online award redemption

Japan Airlines (JAL) has upgraded its JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) website to allow online award redemptions for more partner airlines. Effective immediately, the online partner award redemption is available for American Airlines (AA), Air France (AF), British Airways (BA), Cathay Pacific Airways (CX), and Qantas (QF). Just login to your JMB account and you should be able to see AA, AF, BA as the new options in the drop-down menu.

Enhanced JAL award calendar search

[Update: English version of the enhanced calendar search is finally available]

Japan Airlines (JAL) has just rolled out a new JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) award calendar search tool. Now you can search for awards in a calendar format for up to 330 days for international awards and 2 months for domestic awards! And it will display award availabilities on all flights from your airport! Before this enhancement, you could only search for international award using the calendar search features up to 180 days and 1 city at a time. Unfortunately, it is only available in Japanese right now. But even if you are only using the English version of JMB website, you also get an enhancing which allows you to use the calendar search for up to 330 days now :D. In case you are and adventurist and want to try out the Japanese version, below are the instructions for domestic and international calendar search.

For some people, it has always been a hassle to calculate for the exact FLY ON Points (FOPs) you will get when you plan for a mileage run with JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) as JAL did not have a FOP calculator on its website. I use a excel spreadsheet for my FOP calculations and sometimes the results could be off by 1 if it's a new route that I have never flown on before. But all these have changed! Finally JAL has published an official FOP calculator for BOTH Japan region and non-Japan region JMB members in BOTH Japanese and English! :D

Couple of days ago, Japan Airlines (JAL) has rolled out the online booking engine for oneworld Yokoso tickets (the super discounted 10,000 yen domestic ticket for visitors). Before, you will have to either go through a travel agent or through JAL reservation center. You will have to pay for the reservation fee if you choose to go through JAL. These all has changed. All you need is your itinerary with e-ticket numbers and you are set (well at least for those who want to book through JAL North America website). But since Yokoso tickets are meant for people who lived outside of Japan and JAL can't really check your country of residence online, JAL has implemented an extra step at check-in to verify your eligibility. At check-in you are required to present an official ID with you foreign address on it. Not sure how it works with IDs without address such as the HKID. But those who have been traveling on Yokoso recently has reported that this check isn't enforced right now. Not sure if that's because they booked the ticket before the roll out of online booking or the agents just aren't aware of the change. Either way, make sure you have your ID with you in case they do check. If you found ineligible for Yokoso, you will be asked to purchase a new ticket which could be expensive ;)

For more details on Yokoso online booking, you can refer to JAL website. Note that other regions haven't rolled out this online booking engine yet. I have only seen this on the North America website so far.

Japan Airlines (JAL) has added an auto web check-in button to the bottom of the itinerary list. Still not sure how this will work but looks like you could fill out the info now and it will automatically check you in when the web check-in opens (need to wait for my December flight to find out the entire workflow).

JAL added auto web check-in function on its website.