Looking at an award travel trip on *A metal using United miles in the fall of 2013, on popular, high-demand routes (US west coast - Australia), 2 seats in Biz. Prefer to travel on non-UA metal for this long trip. Our travel dates will not have much flexibility, so I know getting 2 biz class seats will require nabbing them early and perhaps some other tricks.
I'm pretty confident I can get the outbound flight I want if I scoop it up as soon as it becomes available. The return will be 3 weeks later. So I'm leaning towards booking the outbound as a one-way flight, waiting 3 weeks for return flight availability, then booking that as another one-way. I'm OK with the small extra fees for booking two trips rather than one.
Assuming I go with that plan,
is there any way to then get the two one-way flights converted/merged to a round-trip (
after I have secured both outbound and return seats)? Is there any way to add a stopover on the return leg?
The reason I ask is because (if I understand the rules correctly), I believe I can add a stopover in Asia (BKK or NRT on the way home) but stopovers are only allowed on a round-trip - so if I book it as 2 one-ways, no stopovers allowed - correct?
I think it boils down to a choice between:
A) Book two one-ways, and be reasonably assured I get the flights/seats I want, but no stopover.
or
B) Wait until the return flights become available, and hope that the outbound flights that I wanted are still available (highly unlikely - I've been watching them), but if they are still available, then we can get the stopover by booking it as a round trip.
I've thought of booking the outbound, waiting 3 weeks until the return flights become available, then cancel the outbound one-way (re-deposit the miles), then immediately try to book the round-trip. But that seems risky as I'm not confident that the cancelled seats would immediately become bookable, someone else might grab them while I'm on hold trying to get through to the call center, and the redeposit fee (IIRC, around US $150 per ticket) while not huge is also not trivial (the risk of loosing the choice flights is more of a deterrent than the redeposit fee). I have no status.
Getting the flights/seats I want is probably more important to me than getting the stopover. But adding the stopover would be nice - if I can have my cake and eat it too.
Have I got those details and my options about right? Anything I'm missing here?
Thanks for your input, wisdom, and occasionally crazy advice.
