JAL Mileage Bank multi-city for JetBlue: A cheaper path to 25 for 25

JetBlue got a lot of press for the 25 for 25 promotion over the summer when the promotion launched. At the time, I wrote about how I planned to use around 600K Amex Membership Rewards points to book the lion’s share of the necessary flights (to about 20 destinations) for my family of four. Then, last month, Capital One launched a new transfer partner: Japan Airlines Mileage Bank (and they immediately offered a transfer bonus). A couple of readers pointed out that Japan Airlines Mileage Bank could be a far more efficient way to meet the JetBlue 25 for 25 promotion requirements. They weren’t wrong: you can complete JetBlue’s 25 for 25 promotion for far fewer points with Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, provided that the flights book into a Blue fare class and you can get your TrueBlue number attached.

Partner awards count for 25 for 25

For starters, I want to address the fact that partner-booked award tickets for travel on JetBlue have indeed been counting for the 25 for 25 promotion despite the fact that some agents initially told people that they would not count.

We confirmed with JetBlue early on that awards booked through partners like Qatar Airways Avios and Etihad Guest would count toward the 25 for 25 promotion, so long as they were booked in a Blue fare class or higher and that the passenger gets their JetBlue TrueBlue number attached to the reservation prior to travel.

Many customer service agents told callers otherwise, claiming that Etihad-booked awards were some other non-qualifying fare class. We recently posted about reader reports of having completed the challenge and having earned the points and status, with partner-booked awards counting as expected.

I would therefore expect that JAL-booked (JAL = Japan Airlines) award tickets should also count toward JetBlue’s 25 for 25, provided they are not booked into Blue Basic fare classes (note that I don’t think I’ve seen a Blue Basic fare offered by a partner airline).

JAL Mileage Bank award chart for JetBlue flights

Japan Airlines Mileage Bank offers a distance-based award chart for JetBlue flights. Here is the chart for economy class:

And here is the distance-based business class award chart:

Interestingly, the award charts reflect the miles required based on the total itinerary distance. In some cases, you can build complicated multi-city itineraries to save a lot of miles.

JAL’s 3 award search types

There are a multitude of award search options on the Japan Airlines website, but to find awards on JetBlue, you’ll need to start with JMB Partner Airlines Award Tickets and then choose round-trip/one-way, staying in multiple cities, or build your own trip (and choose JetBlue as the airline to search).

The round-trip and one-way search tools are obvious, but there can be some great value to be found in the multi-city search options.

“Staying in multiple cities” with JAL Mileage Bank for JetBlue

If you choose the “staying in multiple cities” search option, you will then have to choose whether to stay in 2 cities, 3 cities, or 4 cities.

Behind the pop-up in the screenshot above, you’ll see multiple different outlines for a stay in multiple cities. This multi-city search tool assumes that you will have a surface sector, also known as an open-jaw (where you arrive at one airport, then depart from a different airport). With this search tool, you need to choose a travel pattern that includes a “surface sector” (in other words, you must have a sector that you connect by driving or with a separate flight). You’ll click on one of the three pictures and it will adjust the search tool to account for where in the interary the surface sector should appear.

As an example, here is a search with the first travel pattern, where the surface sector is between the first and second sectors.

As you can see above, the first sector is Boston to Washington-DCA, stopping in Washington DC for a few days, then there is a surface sector to New York JFK. From New York, the itinerary continues on to Fort Lauderdale, with a stop for a few days before continuing on to Richmond and Orlando. This simple itinerary would reach four JetBlue airports at a minimum: DCA, FLL, RIC, and MCO.

The total distance flown on that itinerary would be a bit over 3,000 miles.

That fits in the JAL award chart distance band of 2,001 to 4,000 miles flown, so it costs a total of 23,000 Japan Airlines miles and 2,580 JPY (about $17.07 in US Dollars).

Given the current point transfer bonus from Capital One to Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, you would need to transfer 23,600 Capital One miles to get 23,000 Japan Airlines miles.

In other words, you would be picking up JetBlue airports at a cost of 5,900 Capital One miles per airport in that example.

To put that trip in date format, it would look like this:

• November 5: Boston to Washington (picking up DCA airport)
• November 8: New York-JFK to Fort Lauderdale (picking up FLL airport)
• November 11: Fort Lauderdale to Richmond to Orlando (picking up RIC and MCO airports)

Interestingly enough, you could do some nesting with a separate trip. For instance, consider this itinerary to “stay at 3 cities”:

Putting the above trip within the original trip above would look like this (with this second itinerary in bold):

• November 5: Boston to Washington DCA (picking up DCA)
• November 5: Washington DCA to Boston (picking up BOS)
• November 7: Boston to New York JFK (picking up JFK)
• November 8: New York-JFK to Fort Lauderdale (picking up FLL airport)
• November 11: Fort Lauderdale to Richmond to Orlando (picking up RIC and MCO airports)
• November 12: Orlando to New York JFK to Providence (picking up PVD)

In the above example, a traveler starting in Boston would essentially fly a same-day round-trip to Washington DCA on November 5th (actually as part of the two separately-booked itineraries), then position on November 7th from Boston to New York for the trip to Florida from November 8-12, ending up back in Providence at the end (a short train ride from Boston).

That second itinerary is actually a bit fewer than 2,000 miles flown, so it costs only 15,000 Japan Airlines miles.

In that example, you could pick up a total of 7 JetBlue airports in the space of 1 week using only 38,000 Japan Airlines miles (actually 39,000 Capital One miles, assuming the current transfer bonus). That’s a net average of fewer than 5,600 Capital One miles per airport (and less than $5 per airport in taxes).

And I’m not convinced that you couldn’t work in another airport or two in that itinerary. For instance, there was a connecting itinerary from Orlando to Providence via San Juan that showed up via the JAL search tool, but I couldn’t get it to price with other components of the itinerary. It would probably also be possible to add a side quest from Fort Lauderdale in the example above, perhaps flying to a Caribbean island or two on November 9th and 10th. There are clearly many more possibilities.

There are some challenges

While I think that the multi-city tool could be a fun and interesting way to piece together a qualifying itinerary for JetBlue’s 25 for 25 (or just a fun extended trip to a number of cities!), it is worth knowing that piecing itineraries together isn’t always simple or easy.

I spent hours playing with the search tool to put together the above itineraries, and in the process, I ran into a number of roadblocks in terms of routing rules that I couldn’t quite understand. I ran into errors suggesting that I couldn’t re-transit the point of origin or stop over in the same city twice:

But it is possible to transit the same city twice on a single itinerary (the second itinerary above includes a leg from Boston to New York (stopping over in New York) and then transits New York en route to Providence in the final legs.

I also had difficulty with itineraries that included stops at more than one New York airport. While JetBlue counts each of the New York area airports separately for the purposes of counting airports, Japan Airlines didn’t like itineraries that started at New York LaGuardia and later had a stop at JFK or Newark (EWR).

In some cases, I just couldn’t make out what the system didn’t seem to like and I eventually had to give up on itineraries where I knew each of the legs had availability, but the tool would error out, saying that no price could be found for the ticket.

But, the good news is that when the tool showed availability, it was often for 7 seats, such as both of these itineraries from New York to Fort Lauderdale (one connecting in Boston and the other in Raleigh-Durham).

It isn’t necessarily easy to use the search tool, but if you can put up with the limitations (and the frequent need to enter a verification code from your email to continue your searches), you may be able to complete a multitude of airports for far fewer miles with  Japan Airlines.

Note that you can also try the “Buld your own trip” tool, which allows for adding sectors without the confines of predefined surface sectors. That may be an even more useful tool, but I didn’t spend as much time digging into it yet.

Bottom line

Japan Airlines offers cumulative distance-based pricing for complex multi-stop JetBlue itineraries. It is possible to book multiple stopovers and to “nest” trips to pick up quite a number of airports for a very reasonable number of miles. If Capital One had launched the partnership with Japan Airlines sooner, I probably could have completed the challenge for even fewer points/miles. If you were on the fence and still considering whether to go after 10, 15, 20, or all 25 destinations before the end of the year for the JetBlue 25 for 25 challenge, it is well worth spending some time with the Japan Airlines multi-city award search tools. And even if you are not at all interested in 25 for 25, it will be well worth keeping this option in mind in the case that a multi-city JetBlue award could fit your plans well. This would probably be less useful for transcontinental itineraries, but for anyone with multiple trips up and down the east coast, this is worth keeping in mind.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.