MEX → Tokyo on ANA business: 24 outbound and 22 return dates at 85,000 Aeroplan points

LOOK WHAT I FOUND

Traveling alone and trying to find ANA business class to Tokyo?

Okay, this is interesting.

I found 24 MEX → NRT dates at 85,000 Aeroplan points with one business-class seat available.

The date range is July through October 2027.

And then I checked the other direction.

Is this the cheapest ANA redemption from North America?

Is this the best points price out there?

No 😂

Aeroplan’s lowest partner pricing band covers itineraries up to 5,000 miles.

So SEA → NRT/HND and YVR → NRT/HND are priced at 55,000 points.

Aside from SEA/YVR, even SFO and LAX fall outside of the <5k miles range, so they’re priced at 85k.

MEX isn’t interesting because it’s the cheapest. It’s interesting because I found a lot of availability.

Not just one direction

Outbound?

Plenty.

I found:

24 MEX → NRT dates

But then I checked the other direction.

Also there:

22 NRT → MEX dates.

There was also one return date outside the window, on June 11, 2027.

Finding one outbound seat is nice.

Finding availability both ways during overlapping periods makes this potentially usable as an actual trip rather than just a fun data point.

So let’s stop looking at rows of data and build an actual trip 💁‍♀️

Let’s build an actual week in Japan

How about a week in Tokyo?

Here’s one example:

July 23: MEX → NRT

July 30: NRT → MEX

One week in Tokyo.

85,000 each direction.

170,000 Aeroplan points round trip, plus taxes + fees (CA$151.40 + CA$176.10).

I know, I know, it’ll be 100 degrees and humid, but that’s not the point, alright? 🥹

Okay. We found an actual round trip.

Now comes the obvious problem: what if you don’t already have 170,000 Aeroplan points?

Okay, but what if I don’t have 170k Aeroplan points?

Fair, I hear you.

Aeroplan is currently offering up to a 90% bonus on purchased points through October 29.

Here’s the breakdown if you bought points with 90% bonus:

90,000 purchased points + 81,000 bonus points = 171,000 points

CA$3,375

Which led me down another rabbit hole below 🤭

Cash vs. buying the points

If I can buy enough points for the entire trip, I obviously had to know how that compared with simply buying the ticket 🤭

I found the same trip, but in cash.

The July 23-30 round trip in Google Flights, currently, costs:

$5,290

All-in cost if starting with zero Aeroplan points:

Am I telling you to blindly go buy 170,000 Aeroplan points? Absolutely not 😂

But if I had already verified the seats and was ready to book? A roughly $2,675 difference compared with the cash fare is pretty interesting.

At that point, the question becomes less:

Reposition to Mexico City?

If I lived in Seattle and saw the same availability there? Obviously I’d start there.

But if the usual gateways weren’t giving me anything and MEX was showing weeks of bookable dates?

Yeah, I’d absolutely be watching Mexico City.

Especially for a solo traveler.

Takeaway: price sweet spot ≠ availability sweet spot

MEX isn’t the cheapest ANA sweet spot. It might be an availability sweet spot.

And those are not always the same thing.

The route with the lowest award price isn’t necessarily the route where you’ll have the best chance of actually finding a seat.

If I were looking for one ANA business-class seat to Japan and the usual gateways were dry, Mexico City would absolutely be on my watchlist.

How to find it again

Seats open and close. This is the exact search I use, so you can check what’s live today.

OutboundMEX → NRT

1. Open seats.aero
2. Explore → program Aeroplan
3. From: North America
4. To: Asia
5. Filter: direct flights
6. Sort by business class points, then date

ReturnNRT → MEX

1. Same search, swap the regions
2. From: Asia
3. To: North America
4. Look for MEX in the results

Award availability and pricing change constantly. The dates above were seen on October 16, 2026, in a manual search I ran on seats.aero, and may no longer be bookable. Availability data from seats.aero.