Finally a FLY ON Points, Miles and Award Calculator on JAL website

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For some people, it has always been a hassle to calculate for the exact FLY ON Points (FOPs) you will get when you plan for a mileage run with JAL Mileage Bank (JMB) as JAL did not have a FOP calculator on its website. I use a excel spreadsheet for my FOP calculations and sometimes the results could be off by 1 if it's a new route that I have never flown on before. But all these have changed! Finally JAL has published an official FOP calculator for BOTH Japan region and non-Japan region JMB members in BOTH Japanese and English! :D
The FOP calculator has a very easy to use interface. All you have to do is to enter your route, fare type, membership type, and your FLY ON service status. Then it will show you the miles and FOPs you will earn on this sector.


For example, below is what one of my favorite JAL regulars, fumitani, will earn if he fly from Tokyo to Los Angeles on a Y fare in December. 

Since we want to find out about FOPs, we will choose the "Flight Mileage / FLY ON Points" tab. And NRT-LAX is an international flight, we will choose "JAL International Flights" tab. fumitani is a JGC Member of the Japan region, so I will enter that as his membership type and he will attain JMB Diamond in December so we will put that as his JMB FLY ON Program Server Status. By looking at the table below, a Y class ticket is Economy Class Fares (100%), so we will put that into the Fares. And we are all set. The only thing left is to hit the "Search" button.


Parameters for JAL FOP Calculator
Parameters for JAL FOP Calculator


And the results will be displayed as followed. First you will get the total number of miles you will earn with this flight sector, with a breakdown to explain how they come up with this number. In this case, sector miles on NRT-LAX flight is 5,458 miles and JMB Diamond will earn 125% bonus miles. So fumitani can earn 12,281 JMB miles on a single flight from NRT to LAX. So a roundtrip NRT-LAX ticket, he will earn 12,281 x 2 = 24,592 JMB miles. More than enough for a one-way economy to business upgrade award with this discounted upgrade promotion.


Results of JAL FOP Calculator
Results of JAL FOP Calculator

But it does have some limitations. First of all it is not smart enough to show results for flights that required connections. For example, try enter Osaka to Los Angeles, it will return an error. Also, looks like it only supports certain codeshare flights. For example, search for LAX-JFK codeshare flights operated by AA will return an error while the KIX-HKG codeshare flights operated by CX returns valid results. I believe the rule of thumb is if the sector miles aren't shown on the JAL sector mile tables (international, domestic), this calculator won't return a result.

For the "Required Miles for Awards" search, you simply enter your mileage balance and select whether you want a domestic or international award. Then select the type of award you want, e.g. award ticket vs upgrade award, and pick the route and class of service. Then click "Search".

It's a bit weird that they ask you to enter the miles balance when you search for the requirement miles for the award. It will return error if you don't have sufficient miles. So just enter a large number if all you want is to find out the miles required. Also, it doesn't seem to take into account of the current campaigns. For example, it shows HND-SFO business class award requires 80,000 JMB miles without showing you the Super Discount Award campaign option.

So it's an exciting new and much needed feature on JAL website and I am glad that they finally deliver this tool for us to play with. So go to JAL website and check out the calculators yourself!

Calculator for Japan Region Members (Japanese, English)
Calculator for Non-Japan Region Members (Japanese, English)

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