another issue to consider is that you need to complete travel within 1 year of the original date of booking (no matter what your actual travel date was). So if you want to push the date far into the future there's a good chance you will violate that rule.

I learned this the hard way. AA even allowed me to schedule a flight outside the window and it ticketed, but then a later change was allowed after a schedule change but that one never did ticket. Luckily I noticed that the status was still "on request" several weeks before I planned to travel, so I found out what was going on with enough time to book an alternative plan on KE instead. I had to pay the redeposit fee but since it was a ton of miles (business class to SE Asia) I certainly didn't want the miles to disappear.