Japan Airlines (JAL) Mileage Bank Terms Change: One-way Awards Now Allowed

Japan Airlines has made a change to its award rules that now allow one-way awards that were previously prohibited.

This change is effective for awards issues as of today (April 30, 2014).

You can access JAL’s award information page here.

Note that one-way awards are only bookable by phone.

JAL has two separate set of award charts. One for the non-Oneworld partner airlines and one for all Oneworld ones.

This can actually make Oneworld award reasonable option using JAL Mileage Bank miles as they allow up to 8 flights and 7 stopovers and now there is no longer to return to the point of origin requirement.

You could consider booking a continuous eight segment one-way trip and having seven stop overs along the way. This has become easier option as the number of Oneworld airline carriers increases.

Here’s example

Helsinki – Madrid – Casablanca – Doha – Maldives – Colombo – Bangkok – Shanghai comes to less than 12,000 miles that would require 90,000 JAL Mileage Bank miles in business class. You could have a stopover in everyone of these cities

Conclusion

I have never quite understood why many of the airlines have not allowed one-way awards, but glad to see that JAL has now made the change.

This makes these Oneworld awards quite attractive using Mileage Bank miles after American Airlines discontinued this award type recently.