ANA First Class is regarded as one of the best in the business and it is a bucket list item for many miles & points enthusiasts. Since the pandemic, the airline has released a very limited number of first class seats (a single seat per aircraft on most occasions) either very early or very late. While last minute seat releases are easy to book with partner airlines (e.g., LifeMiles or Aeroplan), only ANA miles can book early release premium cabin seats 355 days ahead of time.
Since the ANA Mileage Club only allows roundtrip award bookings, it is near impossible to get both outbound and inbound flights in first class with 1-2 weeks to spare during a trip to Japan. To get around this quirk, one has to first book the first available roundtrip first class flights and later change the inbound leg when the award space opens up for the desired return date.
Transfer Amex MR points to ANA and plan the trip 355 days ahead of time
Those interested in trying this method must have miles in the ANA account and 150,000 points are needed for the first class round trip booking. The initial Amex MR point transfer to ANA will take around 2 days but the subsequent transfers will take about 1 day. I encourage interested readers to transfer 1000 points for the first time to make future transfers faster.
Use the ANA Japan website to book seats 1 day ahead compared to the U.S. ANA website
It is an absolute prerequisite to use the ANA Japan website (https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/) for this particular first class redemption. Some experts recommend using VPN to make it appear like you are booking flights from Japan to avoid any booking confirmation errors.
After logging into the account, click on “flight awards” and then on “flight award reservations” (see the picture below), which will open another tab.
JFK to Tokyo have the best ANA First Class “The Suite” flights and it is extremely rare to see any availability on this route.
Chicago, ORD to Tokyo (all) has the older suites (which are still very good) and offers the best availability. For the search parameters, one should choose the dates towards the end of calendar availability. NRT and HND are considered the same airport and are interchangeable.
For example, I was searching for return trip first class flights on 11/15/23 9PM EST (11AM Japan Standard Time) and chose 11/02/24 as the outbound flight and 11/05/24 as the inbound flight.
The next screen shows the possible seat availability, but may not be accurate because it also shows flights that can be wait-listed.
In the next screen to my surprise, first class flights magically appeared on two different ANA airplanes leaving on the same day (only a single seat). I was not able to get any business class seats on the same dates I searched, but was able to see first class seat availability.
It is a simple process to book these seats once you have enough miles in the account.
What if you only find waitlisted ANA first class flights?
ANA waitlisted premium cabin flights are rarely worth the effort and never become available in any reliable manner. I encourage readers to keep trying the above method until you find non-waitlisted flights for both legs.
How to change the inbound dates of this booking
Unless you are willing to fly to Tokyo and return in 2 days just to experience ANA first class, you need to be willing to make changes to the dummy inbound booking that was made on November 5th in the above example.
To reemphasize, the plan is to keep the November 2nd outbound booking from the U.S. to Tokyo and try to change the inbound (dummy) booking from Tokyo to the U.S. within a reasonable time frame (e.g., 2 weeks).
ANA mileage club allows unlimited changes to the award itinerary as long as the route remains the same. This makes it easy to keep an eye on the first class seat to open up for the desired date (e.g., November 20th instead of the original dummy inbound flight on November 5th) by setting an alarm to alert you when it is 9AM in Japan.
Issues with ANA Dummy Bookings
Once you complete the initial booking, the ANA system hard codes it in such a way that online changes to that booking are only permitted for 365 days. If you find a flight on November 20th 2024 based on our example, you may not be able to quickly change it online to grab that last available first class seat.
ANA Customer Service will be able to help with changes to the booking beyond the 365 days ticketing date (up to 385 days based on some user reports). Reaching out to ANA agents over the phone (800-235-9262) could either take a minute or more than an hour (depending on your luck) and customer service is not available 24/7 (only 6AM to 6PM Pacific Standard Time).
Can you book these flights with other ANA Partners?
Aeroplan
Aeroplan booking window is 354 days which is almost the same as the ANA, but award seat availability is not seen at the same time when ANA releases them in Japan. The program also lets you book ANA one-way first class awards for 105K points.
For example, I ran a separate search on the ANA mileage club and found first class seat availability for the round trip from 2024 Nov 1st to Nov 5th (see image below).
I checked for the same flights on Aeroplan and was not able to find any availability for two one-way bookings (see images below).
Aeroplan issues could be due to a temporary glitch in the system with revealing ANA flight awards.
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club requires a phone call to book ANA flights (170,000 points for a round trip from the eastern US) and the agents can hold the ANA awards for up to 48 hours. Since they only let you book 330 days in advance, it is not possible to call VA customer service to book these first class ANA flights 355 days in advance.
LifeMiles
I also compared the possibility of online booking with LifeMiles which opens award bookings 360 days ahead of time (longest of Star Alliance partners). When you initially search for the awards, the departure date calendar may not open that far in advance (in the image below it stops in the month of October), but you can manually click on the “view more dates” tab to see another 7-10 days of award space.
The screenshot below is showing the expanded ANA award space until November 7th 2024 after clicking on the “view more dates” tab (search done on 11/17/23).
While you can easily book two one-way ANA first class seats using LifeMiles, the program started to charge 120K miles for the ANA first class awards (post-pandemic increase).
ANA Dummy Booking Recap
To recap, this method only works for motivated readers who are willing to book the first available roundtrip first class seats at 9AM Japan Standard Time and keep looking for the award space for the inbound leg in the next 2 weeks time (then call the ANA customer service to manually adjust flight dates). I highly recommend calling the ANA customer service the moment their call centers open in the morning.
ANA Dummy Booking vs Reverse Booking
The ANA dummy booking is different from the ANA reverse booking, which seems to be a hit or miss (based on the customer service agent you end up talking to), since it requires cancellation and rebooking of the entire itinerary.
ANA Mileage Club Miles Expiration & Cancellation Policy
If you are stuck with a roundtrip itinerary that will never work for you, the entire booking can be cancelled for 3000 miles. The transferred miles expire after 36 months (no way to change the expiration date), but there are plenty of Star Alliance awards that can be booked with the ANA mileage club (https://awardcracker.com/ana-mileage-club-sweet-spots/).
Summary
I always wanted to write about ANA dummy booking to grab the first available first class seats for interested solo travelers. These hard to find first class seats are not easy to book with other ANA partners. I never tried either of these booking methods myself, because I need two seats for me and my wife.