In late June, I wrote about a great award redemption on ANA. Since that time, I have noticed that the airline has stopped selling seats on the transpacific flights included in this reservation on the days I booked. The flights have not been canceled, but they no longer appear in a Google Flights search.

What does this mean? Apparently, ANA has been loading their planned schedule out to the end (355 days) and then gradually canceling these flights as Japan continues to delay its full re-opening for tourists. I have no idea if they will end up canceling my flights, but I probably will not know for a while.

Apparently, the current schedule is only reliable through the end of October and my award ticket reservations are for June 2023. On the bright side, Japan is expected to fully re-open for tourists by November, according to a couple of articles I read. That should lead to ANA using all these potential flights as there should be big demand for flights to Japan after 2+ years of closure.

I still will have ANA Platinum status (thanks to a status match from Delta) until March 2023, so hopefully this will help me if I need to change my flights. Currently, ANA only allows date or flight changes, but not routing changes. My outbound flight is from Houston, which does not have an alternative ANA flight on the day I have currently booked. I honestly have no idea if ANA will let me switch to a different airport, put me on a United flight or make me switch dates. The big downside to all this is that it’s hard to book other aspects of this two week multi-country trip when I’m not sure if I will have to change all the dates around.

I’ll keep readers updated on what happens as this trip approaches. Obviously, there is plenty of time and everything could remain in place once ANA updates its schedule in October.

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