Question regarding redepositing miles and hoping to avoid the $50 redeposit fee/ticket. Note: I tried to search "redeposit miles" about a dozen times, and each time, the search failed... strange, since I haven't had trouble searching anything else.

In any case, in February, I booked biz-class tickets on KE to Australia just before the redemption rate jumped. Trip is scheduled for January. However... in the time since we "bought" the tickets, my wife has become pregnant, and will be about 5 months pregnant when we're supposed to travel.

Due to that (and a couple other non-relevant reasons), we will not be able to make the trip. Has anyone had any success in getting NW to waive the redeposit fee under certain circumstances?

As an aside, NW has changed the routing a couple of times, but I don't think the changes were so severe that they'd waive the fee.

If status might help get them to waive the fee, I'm silver right now, but will likely reach gold in about 6 weeks, so would it best to be gold before I call NW??