Visa with non rev flight in the future

(Not sure if this is the right forum, let me know if not)

I'm a noob when it comes to this non rev stuff, my mom, who's the employee, just started working for the airline earlier this year. I have a somewhat unique question that I haven't been able to find the answer too after searching the internet and asking around. My girlfriend and I are going to do some traveling this winter for a few months starting in February. I currently have a non rev pass. My mom is going to give my girlfriend one of her other nonrev passes on Jan 1 (when you can transfer them once a year as I understand it), so that we can travel together using them. The issue is that my girlfriend is a Russian citizen, with US residency. As a Russian citizen, she needs to apply for a visa to go to many countries (the first spot we want to go is Japan). The visa application requires you to have a flight booked. Since she'll only have the ability to book the non-rev flights starting Jan 1, she can't book a flight yet, and can't apply for a visa. The visa should only take a week or two to get, but It could take 1-2 months, which is why we want to do it before Jan 1. Anyone else dealt with a similar issue, any ideas?

I've thought of one option: We could book a normal fare flight, with cancellation insurance, get the visa with that flight, and then cancel it, and fly using non-rev flight. This seems a bit sketchy? Also, will the Japanese immigration care that she came in on a different flight than what she applied for her visa with?
Another option is to just book the flight and then cancel within the 24hr cancellation window, and use that for the visa.

Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Welcome aboard Steepski. I moved your post to our General Discussion Forum - brighter lights, bigger marquee. I also removed the duplicate post.