Many use their ANA miles for its potentially awesome Round the World award ticket and relatively cheap awards in business class cabins. But watch out for fuel surcharges on awards.

Updated June 17, 2025. Reminder to book your round-the-world ANA before June 24, 2025 as ANA will be removing the option.

For this post, I’m not going to get into the details of the elite status aspect of the program and instead focus on the redemption side of the program.

ANA miles mostly come from Amex Membership Rewards (MR)

Unlike other major airlines, ANA is rather limited in transfer partners. Of the major banks, you’re only going to be able to transfer in points from Amex MR. And even then, it’s not an instant transfer, instead taking about 48 hours or so to complete. That delay in transfer speed could cause some concerns over award space disappearing.

From what I understand from the ANA call center, if you’re looking to book ANA flights, you can call in and have the award space placed on reserve for a couple days, allowing enough time for your points to arrive. If you’re looking to book award flights on partner airlines, you’re not going to be able to hold the award space. Instead, you’ll have to just hope the award flights will remain.

You might wonder if you should proactively transfer points over, but I’d still recommend against it. While the program never has had a transfer bonus from Amex, the same rules apply on why you shouldn’t transfer points without a defined goal in mind.

Caution: ANA passes along fuel surcharges

Fuel surcharges, commonly referenced as “YQ” based on how it appears in fares, is typically loosely tied to price of fuel. Some award programs pass along this fee to you when paying for your flight with points while others do not. If the fee is passed along to you, that can result in your “free” flight costing you over $1,000 as a cash copay for the journey. Airlines generally have control over how much of the fare they consider to be YQ.

That said, ANA is very transparent about the amount of YQ charged for their own flights. In fact, they have a website dedicated to this. I’m not sure I’ve seen another airline with as much information on the charges provided to the topic.

ANA is one of the programs that passes these fees on to you. If you’re booking travel on ANA, the fees will follow what their site dictates. But what about their Star Alliance partners? It’s generally well-known that the Miles & More airlines are punishing with their fees (Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, Brussels). But you’ll also find high fees with Air Canada, Asiana, Thai, and South African Airways. You’ll want to avoid booking ANA miles with these airlines if you want lower fees to pay.

ANA releases space on its own flights 355 days in advance

If you want the most opportunity to fly ANA, get your trigger finger ready at 9AM JST, 355 days before your flight. That’s when ANA will tend to release one first class and one business class seat on each flight. This is generally before other Star Alliance programs (and Virgin Atlantic) can book the ANA space.

That unfortunately leads to a bit of a problem if you’re looking to book ANA metal for more than just yourself. If you are an elite member with ANA, you might have access to more award space. But otherwise, the best you might be able to do when the schedule opens if flying with others is fly in multiple cabins or on different flights.

You’ll also potentially find more award space 2-3 weeks before departure. This might then allow you to change your flights to consolidate your party all onto the same flight, if you’re lucky.

Lastly, because all flights must be a roundtrip, booking right when the schedule opens can be tricky. You might need to wait a day for an eligible return flight to become available. Then you can change your return flight when your preferred date becomes available.

Award cancelation fees are (somewhat) reasonable with ANA miles

Should you decide not to keep your award flight and want to redeposit the miles, ANA will let you do it. But unlike other programs, ANA will charge you a cancelation fee in miles rather than in cash. To be specific, the fee will cost you 3,000 ANA miles. On an expensive award, that’s a pretty reasonable price to pay. On a cheap award, you might end up a little frustrated with the fee.

Either way, it can be a little bit of a thorn in your side if you want looking to cancel a flight, and then immediately rebook. If you’ve just been transferring over the bare minimum to ANA for an award, any cancelation will prevent you from being able to immediately rebook. That can be a little frustrating, so I can understand a desire to transfer in 3,000 Amex MR per ticket to ANA the moment you think taking the trip is doubtful.

It should also be noted that changes done at least 96 hours in advance of departure are free.

Awards are zone-based

The most important rule to remember up front is that all award flights must be roundtrips (or open jaws). You cannot have a one-way award flight.

Now, with that out of the way, ANA has a zone-based award chart. They post online the price of awards solely on ANA metal and also their partner flight charts.

If you are looking to book a mixed cabin award where the outbound flight is in economy and the return is in business, just take the straight average of the prices listed in their award chart. As an example, say you want to book business class from the US to Europe and economy class from Europe to the US. The listed roundtrip prices are 55,000 in economy and 100,000 in business. You would then expect to pay 77,500 miles for that itinerary.

Stopovers are free with ANA miles

For both flights on ANA metal and on partner airlines, you are allowed one stopover either on the outbound or the return. However, note that when flying on ANA metal, you’re not able to have a stopover if you are originating in Japan.

What are the sweet spots?

Flying between Europe and the US in business

ANA offers one of the best mileage prices for flights between the US and Europe. For only 100,000 miles (equivalent to 50,000 miles per direction), you can book yourself a comfortable price at practically the best price. However, there are a couple of important caveats to this:

• Asiana offers a cheaper mileage rate (80,000 miles per roundtrip), but with no banks that transfer points to Asiana, it’s generally a red herring to focus on that. Besides, Asiana will soon disappear due to the merger with Korean Air.
• Most award availability is controlled by the Miles & More airlines. As mentioned above, expect hefty YQ on those routes (in the range of $1,000 per direction).
• If you want to avoid YQ, stick to United Airlines, LOT Polish, or Singapore (assuming you can find availability).

Flying between Japan and the US in business on ANA

If you’re looking to travel between mainland US and Japan on ANA, you’ll find roundtrip prices that start at 100,000 miles for business class. If you find the space for travel during low season, the pricing will be cheaper than what Virgin Atlantic charges for travel on ANA. Regular season travel mirrors Virgin Atlantic pricing.

You might wonder why bother with booking with ANA miles for a minimal difference in points price. But unless you’re looking for just a one-way flight, I’d say it’s better to go with the program that opens up earlier to book your flight.

And yes, there is a cheaper price flying to Hawaii from Japan (from 40,000 miles one-way), but Virgin Atlantic offers better pricing here (a flat 37,500).

Flying between the rest of Asia and the US in business on ANA

How about skipping Japan and instead checking out other cities in Asia? Well, for as few as 5,000 miles more in business class, you could instead travel to South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Or you could spend as few as 25,000 miles more and venture all the way down to Southeast Asia.

Of course, as mentioned above, you don’t need to skip Japan. You’re more than welcome to have a stopover in Japan along the way to or from Asia. That represents remarkable value.

Flying between Oceania and the US in business on ANA

It’s awfully difficult to make it nonstop between the US and Australia or New Zealand. That can mean that routing through Asia is necessary if you want more options to get to the land down under. If you can find the seats during low season, business class can be yours for a low price of 130,000 miles. You can absolutely pair that with a stopover in Japan somewhere along the way.

Domestic Japan flights

Go figure that ANA allows different rules for purely domestic flights. Here you can book one-way flights starting at just 6,000 miles per direction in economy. But given how efficient the bullet train is within Japan, you should also compare airfare with the price of the train.

Booking Singapore Airlines awards in business

Singapore Airlines business class is a very desirable option given the level of service, the food, and the seats. Assuming you can find the award space, the price for business class is just 55,000 miles roundtrip within Southeast Asia or between 60,000 and 63,000 for the rest of Asia. Or if you want to fly between Southeast Asia and Europe, you can do that for just 94,000 roundtrip.

Don’t get aspirations of flying in Singapore first class because Singapore doesn’t release that space to partners.

Round the World awards with ANA miles

Update: this award type will be removed starting June 24, 2025.

One of the single best theoretical awards possible from ANA is the Round the World award.

• The price of your award will ultimately depend on the class of service and the distance flown.
• You must cross both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans once.
• Backtracking is not permitted.
• You can have up to eight stopovers, but no more than three allowed in Europe and no more than four allowed in Japan.
• The last international flight must be at least 10 days after the first international flight.
• Up to 12 flight segments are allowed.
• The award is priced at the price of the highest cabin along the journey. If one flight is in first class and the rest is in business, the price for first class will prevail for the entire journey.
• You need to call to book this award.

The award chart is as follows:

It’s important to emphasize the theoretical aspect of how awesome the award is. Because these days it certainly feels like many airlines offer the most award availability to their own members. ANA doesn’t operate its own flights in such a way that it would count for this award (they don’t have any flights that cross the Atlantic Ocean). So you’re entirely dependent on the award space you can find.

Plus, you’ll have to be cognizant of the YQ that will ultimately add up. While the mileage price is attractive, there might be a hefty cash copay to go along with it.

Infant awards are 10% of the miles price (sometimes)

Back when we flew internationally with an infant, we ended up sometimes paying a pretty penny to allow our child to sit in our lap. Without getting into the debate on the safety of the lap child, I can say it sometimes got expensive.

With most airlines, you would be forced to pay 10% of the cash price of the ticket. Say you found a flight for 75,000 miles in business class one-way. But if you want to bring your lap infant, you’d have to pay 10% of the cash fare, which could be thousands of dollars. A one-way flight is painfully priced high, and you might pay less if doing a roundtrip, but it’s still quite a dent. I’d say the rough average of what we paid for an infant was around $600 for the ticket.

But with ANA, you’ll only pay 10% of the mileage price when flying on ANA. But if you’re not flying on ANA, expect to pay cash consistent with the cost of the ticket.

How to Best Search for Availability?

I do not like using ANA’s own website to search for award space. The website is not set up well if you don’t already have an idea of when flights would be available. You might be better off searching partner websites for award space (such as United Airlines), especially when a calendar is offered. Just be careful using another site to review award space as ANA might not be able to book all the partners that appear on that site.

Another consideration is using the free point.me tools to help search for awards.

Do Miles Expire?

Yes, most ANA miles expire after 36 months regardless of activity in your account. There are some promotional miles earned that may have a different expiration, but if Amex MR is your preferred way of earning miles, just focus on the 36-month policy.

Suggested reading:

• Destination Spotlight: Kyoto, Japan
• Destination Spotlight: Osaka, Japan
• Japan Pro Tip: Luggage Delivery Services