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When I booked these flights last night, I was probably as surprised as you’ll be reading this that I was able to parlay 84,000 Rove Miles into 6 one way flights from the US to Mexico in FIRST CLASS.
As a reminder, you can earn Rove Miles in a variety of ways like making purchases via their Rakuten-like shopping portal (but with way more merchants), or by booking flights or hotels which all earn Rove Miles, transferable to a laundry list of transfer partners.
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As for these award flights, t’s not always this easy, but sometimes the stars align.
First, keep in mind that JAL has some very attractive partner pricing, and that they nearly always price round trips cheaper than one ways. So I got the best pricing here by booking round trips.
I’ve written about the insane deals you can book using JAL to book JetBlue, though that JAL/JetBlue partnership ends March 31, 2026. But JAL also has great rates on lots of partners such as American Airlines and Emirates.
So let’s setup how I booked these First Class flights from NYC to Mexico for just 14,000 miles per flight.
- JAL is a new partner of Rove Miles. (New to Rove Miles? We have an exclusive deal where you simply signup and you get 1,500 Rove Miles. If you don’t have an account, go and do that while the deal lasts… It will open in a new window, so do that and come right back.)
- Through March 31st, Rove has a 50% transfer bonus to JAL.
- JAL was charging 126,000 miles for 3 round trip flights (NYC-CUN). That’s 42,000 miles round trip. (Again, two one way segments would be a decent amount more miles because of how JAL prices.)
- With the transfer bonus of 50%, I needed only 84,000 Rove Miles.
- Note that for all 3 round trips combined, I paid about $420 in tax, but that was unavoidable for US <–> Mexico on an award.
The flights are on American Airlines. JetBlue could have also worked, though they fly economy-only planes from NY to Cancun.
I found the AA flights by searching on Alaska’s website. Easy to use and if they are there, JAL can also book.
Once you know your flights, the JAL site isn’t that hard. It’s terrible for doing initial searches, but straightforward to book flights you already know you want.
Do you have a JAL Mileage Bank account yet? If no, create one. Interestingly, while new accounts generally need to wait 30 days to book an award, and while Capital One and Bilt have that shortened to 7 days, Rove somehow made it so you can book in 24 hours or less. New Japan Airlines Mileage Bank accounts are able to book flights using Rove Miles starting at 6:00 p.m. JST following your first transfer. Depending on when you transfer that could be minutes or 23 hours… Moving on…
First, login to your JAL account and find the below screen.
Click here…
And then here.
On the next screen, look for the Partner Airlines dropdown. In this case, choose American Airlines.
The rest is straightforward. Choose the flights you want and keep clicking. You do go through far more screens than seems necessary, but it works.
If you already have an active (seasoned and ready to book) JAL account, then it’s easy enough to confirm availability, transfer the Rove Miles, go back to the main page and refresh to see the miles show up, then go back through the booking process.
So thanks to Rove and this great transfer bonus, the three of us are flying First Class to Mexico, both ways, for 84,000 Rove Miles.
Have you used Rove Miles fora deal like this? Or even just JAL miles generally? Maybe you did the JetBlue Mint deal I wrote about a few months ago? It’s a pretty awesome program (except for the 3 year hard expiration of miles). I do have a guide to JAL Mileage Bank here if you want a primer.
