terpfan101

I'm trying to book an award flight for two to the Caribbean later this year and will have to take a standard award one way and saver award the other way. I would like to do a stopover and continue on to Europe at a later date but am about 10K miles short for another two weeks when my credit card miles post.

Award availability on the two flights I need is as follows:
Departure: YN=9
Return: On flight #1 X=6, XN=9, HN=9, YN=9 and on flight #2 all four buckets are =9.

Revenue buckets are as follows:
Departure: C0 D0 Z0 P0 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H0 Q0 V0 W0 S0 T0 L0 K0 G0 N0
Return:
Flight #1: C9 D0 Z0 P0 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K6 G0 N0
Flight #2: C9 D0 Z0 P0 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K9 G9 N9

Questions:

1) Seems like the departure flight would be most at risk but since availability is standard space only available to elites & credit card holders, will I be safe? Basically are those YN standard awards available until the flight is sold out?

2) Based on the award and revenue availability for the return flights, am I safe to hold out? Would the saver award seats disappear without any additional passengers reserving? To be safe I plan to do the farelock once I get within 7 days of the expected credit card miles posting date (so I have about 7-9 more days).

Thanks in advance!