My fiancee and I are scheduled to fly this Thursday LFT-IAH-FRA-VCE via UA Mileage Plus reward tickets. The IAH-FRA and FRA-VCE legs are on Lufthansa in business class and the LFT-IAH leg is on an all coach UA Express flight. Return flights to the U.S. are also in J on LH from VIE (open jaw) with UA Express for the final flight to LFT.

Unfortunately, my fiancee is now in the hospital recuperating from severe pneumonia and thus will not be able to travel.

I had redeemed miles for this trip via UA Saver Awards earlier in the year prior to the mileage increase for award travel on Lufthansa. Each r/t ticket was 100,000 miles for business class. I believe this has now been increased to 140,000 r/t MP miles per person on LH for J class if one can find availability.

So I'm looking for options and advice here. I currently have no elite status with UA. I talked with a UA MP rep via phone (and she was a bit hard to understand) who stated I would have to redeposit my miles with a charge of $200 per ticket for a total of $400. However, she also said that because there is medical reason for the cancellation of our trip and the redeposit of the 200,000 miles back into my MP account, I would be able to have the $400 refunded. But she did not exactly state how to do this.

It would be nice to simply move this award travel to a later date with no increase in the number of miles required; however, it appears this is not possible and that additional miles would be required for future travel on LH in biz class to the tune of 280,000 UA MP miles for two people rather than 200,000 miles. Does this sound correct?

Many thanks for any advice anyone may have.