The Thrifty Traveler Podcast · Thursday, October 1, 2026
Japan Airlines Mileage Bank is highlighted as a top-tier loyalty program, particularly for its value in booking partner airlines and JAL flights. Despite the potential for award rates to increase in the future, the program currently offers excellent redemption options, including business class flights to South America via LATAM and significantly cheaper round-trip flights to Tahiti on Air France compared to booking directly with Air France.
“I mean, it's all the way up for me. It's at the very top at this point. I mean, being able to book, obviously, Japan Airlines flights themselves for... lower rates if you can if you can find the 55,000 rates that's amazing but you can book them anywhere from like 70,000 all the way up to like 110,000 and there's way more availability so that's great obviously booking partners latom also it's like a great way to get to south america if that's on your list that is one of the ways that you can book latom business class i've just recently flew it and it was a great time”
“Being able to fly from LA to Tahiti for only 85,000 miles round trip is insane. Yeah. That round trip discount is a game changer.”
“This is this is up as high as it gets with the most important caveat that it is only a matter of time before all of this comes crashing down so if you have a bunch of capital one points or bill points or city points and some of these things sound good to you you got to book it now”