Originally Posted by warreng24

My parents want to fly PHX-BKK. The know roughly when they want to leave, but they do not know when they want to return. That's the problem.

It looks like I have a couple of options:
1) Book award tickets from my account (1K), which permits no cost changes provided that the class of service (saver vs standard) is available.

2) Book the lowest available fare, take a rough guess as when they want to return and hope it works out. Otherwise, pay the 250.00 change fee and the fare difference.

3) Book what united.com calls a "flexiable fare" which may waive the change fee (supposedly it "varies" according to the help box that pop's up, so I'll have to carefully read/interpret the fare rules).

4) Book a fully refundable fare (aka "unrestricted fare").


Some of my thoughts, can someone check my logic on this?
Option 4 seems horrifyingly expensive.

Option 3 only makes sense (to me) if the flexiable fare that waives the change fee is less than $250.00 more than the lowest available fare (option 2).

Option 1 seems like the best solution, but there's no saver business available. So, I'd have to either do economy or standard business. I was planning (with the revenue tickets), to use Miles+Copay to upgrade them. Also, my parents don't get PQM's (fka EQM's) on the award tickets.

I'm leaning towards Option 2 right now and rolling the dice... Anyone else have any other ideas?

Thanks in advance...