I have a United award flight to Japan in October that I need to cancel and nothing big that I want to book within a year, though I will be traveling to Europe next October and could use them then. Unfortunately, that would be too far out to be of use because the schedule won't be published when my soon-to-be-cancelled flights are supposed to be taken.
I was debating whether it's worth changing to a one-way ticket LAX-MCO (and saving $100 in fees vs. cancelling) for this April that I'm not 100% sure I'll need. Problem is, if I can't get the time off from work then, I'll just have to cancel that and end up paying the $200 fee, for a total of $300 including the original change fee.
As I was debating and Googling, I came across this blog post from 2012:
http://www.milevalue.com/save-100-or...-united-award/
Does anyone know if the "trick" written about there - i.e., changing your award to an inter-island Hawaii flight priced at 5000 miles to receive the rest of the miles back - still works and how risky it is? I would not be flying the Hawaii flight.