By way of background, this topic came up last week on the AA forum in two different threads. The consensus on the threads were wildly different from each other. I think it is an interesting-enough discussion to elevate to this forum.

The basic question:

Is it ethical to book and ticket two separate award reservations with the knowledge that you will only be using one of them?

Details:

I am planning award travel for late September/early October of this year. While I have enough vacation time to take a two week trip, work politics may make that not feasible. However, a week long trip would not be problematic. Since I have enough miles in my AAdvantage account, I have booked two separate award tickets: one to Istanbul for a week and one to Singapore and Beijing for two weeks. My preference is to do the two week trip, but I won't know for certain if that will be possible until close to departure time (under a month in advance). AA allows you to cancel an award booking and redeposit your miles for $100, a small price to pay, in my opinion, for the assurance of having a contingency plan. While I am aware that this is potentially keeping someone else from using their miles, I am not convinced I owe this hypothetical person any ethical duties.

What do you think?