Originally Posted by
Kacee
Since we're talking about an award reservation, I believe it would only reset if you redeposited the miles. Otherwise you still have a ticket and a PNR, and thus only the single 24 hour window to change/cancel.
But the more important issue here is that the strategy likely won't work because you typically can't hold the outbound partner flight through a ticket reissuance.
Granted; you’d need to do a redeposit and thus get a clean PNR.
And, yes, I agree — I don’t think this is likely to be a viable strategy. OP: how many future changes do you expect, and when? With no UA status, you’d pay $75 for each change if executed more than 60 days in advance. If you’re talking about one future change, done 60+ days prior, that’s an extra $75 times the likelihood that you have to make the change... and I would give very serious consideration to biting the bullet and booking separate reservations unless you’re planning to take advantage of the Excurionist Perk (free one-way trip in another region in between the first and last segments of your trip; one-way flights are ineligible). Now, if you’re talking about 2 or 3 changes, or last-minute changes, the extra costs add up.
However, as Kacee points out, UA’s new system seems to have a really bad habit of revalidating partner award inventory when it doesn’t seem like it would be necessary. So, suppose you hold KIX-NRT-JFK / JFK-NRT-KIX, and you try to change JFK-NRT-KIX to a new date while keeping KIX-NRT-JFK the same. The change may fail unless award inventory is still available on KIX-NRT-JFK! That wouldn’t be an issue with two one-way awards.
Finally, are you more likely to postpone the whole trip, changing both legs at once, or are you more likely to shorten or lengthen your stay, changing only one leg? The change fees for the latter are the same whether you have one itinerary or two.