Here’s how I booked my flights to Japan….
Delta wanted about 140k miles for SLC-Tokyo round trip for April 2023. Ouch!
Virgin Atlantic partners with Delta so most NONSTOP delta flights show up on Virgin‘s calendar. Again the key is to search for NONSTOP. Since I knew delta doesn’t do a nonstop to Tokyo from SLC, I looked at LAX-Tokyo. For LAX-HND, Virgin wants 35k one way, or 70k (now prices have increased to 49.5k oneway and 99k roundtrip). Virgin also offers SEA-HND for just 27.5k one way or 55k roundtrip (now prices have increased to 44k oneway or 88k roundtrip). Just be aware, you’ll need to pay for an additional flight to get you to LAX or SEA. In order to find the SEA-HND flights, it's a little tricky because the website doesn't want to let you put HND into the "destination" box, it'll prompt you to put in NRT but this won't get the results you want. When you click the "destination" box, you should see some words below it that say "Full Airport List", click that, then click "Rest of World" at the top, then scroll to find Japan, then click the Tokyo airport HND. Finally you can search for some 27.5k dates!
The nice thing is that Amex, Chase, Citi, and Capital One ALL transfer points to Virgin...... AND periodically they offer 30% transfer bonuses to Virgin. So that 70k LAX flight roundtrip would only be 54k. The 55k SEA-HND roundtrip flight would only be 43k miles. WOW!!!!
Below is an image showing LAX-HND dates and prices on the Virgin website.
Another option is American or Alaska Airlines. They want just 35k one-way, or 70k round trip. Alaska partners with JAL airlines (so that’s the plane you’ll actually be on) and it’s out of Seattle. The nice thing is SEA- Tokyo or SLC-Tokyo are the same price, Alaska just flies you on one of their planes to SEA, then you get on the JAL flight from there and there’s no extra cost. At half the price of Delta, that definitely appealed to me! I snagged 4 one-way tickets with some Alaska miles I’ve had for a long time (from an Alaska airlines credit card my husband & I both earned welcome bonuses on). That used all my Alaska miles so I booked Virgin Atlantic for the one-way home.
This is a big reason why it’s good to “shop around” and a good reason to have a card like the Amex Gold vs a "Delta" credit card. With a Delta credit card, your only option is to pay what Delta wants. With an Amex Gold card you have the option of using your miles with Delta or other airlines, plus you can get periodic transfer bonuses. 🙌🙌🙌
FYI- Amex doesn’t transfer to Alaska Airlines so opening credit cards with different airlines is also a wise move to give you options.
So what should you do if you want to fly to Japan??? You have 2 great options. First option is to use Alaska airlines points (this option has you flying on Japan Airlines). For this you would need to open an Alaska Airlines credit card (they typically offer 50k for sign up). That's enough to get a one-way ticket from SLC-NRT (or visa versa). If you want a round trip 70k point ticket, you'll need to put some serious spending on the card, or you could transfer some Marriott points over to Alaska Airlines to top off your balance.
The second option is to book a 27.5k one-way or 55k round-trip ticket with Virgin Atlantic from SEA-HND (this option has you flying on a Delta plane). This can be done by opening a Chase sapphire preferred card (no annual fee the first year if you apply in a branch), or a personal Amex card (the green, gold, or platinum cards would all work, NOT the AMEX DELTA cards though), a Citi credit card, or a Capital One Venture or VentureX credit card. Once you have your 55k points earned you can transfer the points to Virgin and book. Or wait for a transfer bonus, then send just 43k points over to Virgin Atlantic and the 30% bonus will mean you now have 55k Virgin Points - enough to book SEA-HND roundtrip. Typically Amex offers the most transfer bonuses to Virgin (usually 3x each year, December is usually one of the times). Chase, Capital One, and Citi have only recently started to offer transfer bonuses. So your best bet may be with Amex. Remember, you will need to get from SLC- SEA by booking a separate flight. Another option using Virgin Atlantic points would be getting a Virgin Atlantic credit card. This won't ever offer 30% transfer bonuses, so you would need the full 55k points to book a flight from SEA to Japan (or visa versa).
You could also combine these 2 options (like I did), and buy one-way tickets.
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