Originally Posted by
jmanirish
I can't tell what you have booked. It sounds like you have a one-way LHR-TXL-FRA-IAD (based on the fact that you said 60k for 2 people). If that is the case you won't be able to turn the TXL into a stop-over (i.e stay for more than 24 hours).
Your best options as I see it are then:
1- Keep as is, (no additional cost obviously)
2- You buy (2) one-way tickets LHR-TXL, and then pay to have your LHR-TXL-FRA-IAD award ticket changed to TXL-FRA-IAD. This will cost 2*$100 change fees to the origin + 2 one-way tickets (looks around $100 each) so will likely cost ~$400.
One important thing to note with this option, because you would change your origin, it means you can choose somewhere other than Berlin, if you wanted (you could go visit any city that you can find award space XXX-IAD).
Thanks for that thought. I did check German Wings which does have a one-way fare of $100 to Berlin from LHR. So adding in the change cost would bring it to about $400 which is an acceptable draft plan!! Interestingly, when I tried to extend my return, UA did say it would be an extra 30K BUT the screen also said that I would be refunded about $200 of my original cost (I think because some taxes, etc. had changed in 2015...I paid for the award tickets in 2014.) So it is conceivable I would also get some refund to offset the pain in my wallet.
Finally, I found a possible way to get the 30K new mileageplus miles into my wife's account. She is an officer in our small company (LLC) and she can apply for a Chase United MileagePlus Business Card!! So I have pinged her about that and will pursue that as quickly as possible to use it to pay $1000 of bills and purchases. Then I should have the miles before May. Only then, if there are no award flights left that I can use, I will look to purchase a flight or part of the flight.
Any additional thoughts would be much appreciated from the group.