Background
JetBlue added Japan Airlines (JAL) as a mileage partner last week. Over the weekend there was award space using JetBlue miles for booking at least two seats in JAL First Class between the US and Japan for most of the schedule. That sort of availability for booking JAL First is unprecedented; it’s a lot like if you drove to every Walmart in the United States and didn’t find a single person in line at a money center. While technically it’s possible to happen, if it did you’d probably wonder if you were in some sort of bizarro churning novel and whether you ought to visit every roulette table in Vegas and bet on black.
The wide-open JAL First availability was only found on JetBlue though. Other partners that can book JAL First awards like AA, Alaska, and JAL itself had almost no availability for even one seat, let alone two. So, how come JetBlue had so much availability? The dump in inventory could reasonably explained by one of two things:
- Launch celebration: JAL gave JetBlue plenty of inventory not available to others during initial launch to celebrate the new partnership
- Bug: A technical error between JAL and JetBlue showed space that shouldn’t have been bookable
It’s too soon to know which of the above possibilities it was, but for the sake of everyone who transferred a bunch of miles into JetBlue’s program and booked awards, let’s hope it was the former.
The Wisdom
This is a wisdom post (without an alliteration, sorry Jen), so what can we learn from all this?
- When space is only available via a single partner, there’s a chance it’s not real and will either be non-bookable or will get cancelled before you can fly
- When you’re going to transfer a flexible, valuable currency like Ultimate Rewards into a less valuable program like JetBlue TrueBlue, make sure you’re comfortable with stranded miles in case the booking doesn’t work; do a risk asssessment
- Don’t forget that many airlines let you hold awards over the phone, so you can test award bookability without transferring miles in and potentially leaving them stranded (but JetBlue doesn’t offer holds, so didn’t matter in this case)
- New partnerships occasionally open short windows of opportunity
Good luck to those who booked!
Future churning novel brings even more JetBlue-esque craziness.