Community

Strange feature when booking JAL award tickets with AS

4 days ago

Trying to book HND to the US West Coast flights with P2. We have similar mileage balances, so we planned to book separately and also use the Aspire card to hit the reimbursement. But right after P2 finished booking, when I got to the payment step on my end, it errored out and only cash tickets were available. The award inventory clearly showed >1 when I was booking.

Left with no choice, I cancelled P2's booking, and the award seat didn't return to inventory until several hours later. Not willing to give up, I tried again—booking two tickets directly from my account—and it went through successfully. What kind of magical feature is this..? No matter how many seats are in inventory, once any one person books one, they all get blacked out?

1.4K

Comments (5)

朱花荣4 days ago

Just a heads-up: when tickets are issued separately and you run into this kind of last-minute seat lock, any later changes or refunds may no longer be on the same booking, so the steps and fees are handled separately for each. Especially with award tickets close to departure, don't make your itinerary too tight just to use up your reimbursement—and think ahead about the backup cost of a cash ticket.

吴正伟4 days ago

If you're not in a hurry, you can wait until the tickets are fully released back into the pool and prices have stabilized before booking them separately; if you're short on time, it's more reliable to book both tickets in a single order. The catch is that you need to be okay with both tickets changing together if the order is modified or refunded.

吴先生rr3 days ago

How were the taxes and fees on that two-ticket order later allocated for reimbursement?

Osim傲胜英国3 days ago

One thing I'd like to confirm: you mentioned the fare pool shows more than 1, but JAL's own availability and that of its partners aren't necessarily in sync. When ticketing separately, the availability for the second ticket may depend on the specific cabin class and the ticketing channel. It would be best to compare the numbers shown at the time with a screenshot of the actual error, and then determine whether it's a seat-blocking logic issue.

Janet612969623 days ago

It might not be the entire pool being blocked—it could be that consecutive ticket purchases from the same account triggered a temporary limit. I'd suggest waiting a few days to see if it happens again, or checking whether others have reported similar issues.