If award seats don't show up at all within a couple week timeframe, that can spell trouble for me.

At what point does the oneworld award "ticketed" flight plan become "etched in stone (can't change route nor carrier)?

As I am still building it up, or when I have completed the itinerary and booked the last segment?

As I have to wait for each segment to become available, and we plan to take a month so the building of the ticket will also take a month, if there is no availability for a segment while still building the ticket, can I go back and change the routing (possibly also requiring changing the carrier) to be able to continue proceeding (maybe cutting out that stop altogether) with the trip?

For instance, I would want to figure out what I can get tickets for from the East Coast to Tokyo before I arrange for the flight(s) to reach the chosen gateway. Or returning would be nice to do SYD-LAX-WAS, but I may have to go SYD-HKG-WAS or SYD-HKG-LAX-WAS or even another. If spanning more than one day, I won't find out if I can take a route until the next day's segment opens posts to the scheduling computer.

Is flexability until final itinerary is ticketed okay?

Thanks,

Steve