Question for the experts here.

I just snagged partner award ticket (BR) on Nov 5th, TPE-SEA (March 24th), ORD-TPE (Oct 27th), 355 days from today. I found out I can change my award ticket with the same routing online, given there's availability with different dates. Question, how far back can I change return segment? Since the ticket is technically issued Nov 5th 2021, will Nov 4th 2022 be the last day I can fly the last segment?

I always watch BR's frequencies of any route in the most recent month, rather than what's open on the calender. ie, TPE-SEA, I could book with award here most days but I would only book Thur and Sun since those are the only 2 days BR currently flies to SEA. They usually cancel flights of other days the month prior.

I believe the last segment has to be 1 year from the first segment, so the last day will be Oct 26th 2023 in your case. However, this change must be done over the phone, as you can only change up to 1 year from booking date online.

Actually if I end up flying March 24th (first segment as ticketed) the latest return will be March 23rd, 2023.

Now provided miles and routes are the same, will it affect rebooking if some miles would have expired at the time of rebooking?

Planning a trip to Japan and Vietnam in February/March 2023 with the following flights in J on NH metal for 85,000 miles:

14FEB23: SFO-NRT
03MAR23: NRT-SFO

Other J trip segments are:
22FEB23: KIX-SIN-HAN on SQ metal using 68,500 SQ miles
27FEB23: HAN-NRT on NH metal using 32,500 VS miles (for one-way award)

However, I see I can book multi-segment award SFO-NRT // HAN-NRT// NRT-SFO (NH metal, 97,500 NH miles, stopover in NRT) with same dates as above and save 20,000 miles. My question is: If, for some reason, I decide not to go to Vietnam during my trip and I stay in Japan the whole time, will my NRT-SFO segment be cancelled since I no-showed my HAN-NRT segment? Not too interested in getting a refund at that point, but would hate to be stranded in Japan at the end of my trip for no-showing to the middle segment.

Will book this itinerary, either as RT or multi-segment, as award availability opens in late Feb and early Mar '22. Dummy bookings will be within low seasonality; I will make sure to transfer in more miles to cover extra cost of regular season when I move the last flight to 03MAR23. Thanks!

Yes, NRT-SFO will be cancelled. You will not be able to modify the booking to remove the HAN-NRT segment either.

Thank you for the quick reply. I will most likely book HAN-NRT separately via VS miles for maximum flexibility.

When a waitlist clears is there an email subject line?

how will you know a wait list clears? I’m assuming you need to call in and ticket it as well?

There will be an email notification. You can ticket it online.

Looking for advice: I had a partner award ticket GSO-IAD-LIS->MAD-LIS-IAD-GSO. All flights between GSO-IAD have all been cancelled by United Airlines. New routing is GSO-EWR-IAD, creating an additional stopover. The flight is still pretty far out (Sep 2022). Should I be proactive on this and call ANA for options? or should I wait until i get closer to my departure date? Could I cancel my first leg from GSO-IAD and IAD-GSO? It would be faster just to drive.

So date changes (same route) can be done even after the first segment has been flown?

With BR seemingly opening LAX route only a week out, looking to book a TPE-LAX further out and change it once it becomes available closer in to desired date (desired outbound LAX-TPE already available).

I recently made an award ticket reservation for SFO-NRT and, in order to ticket the award, made a dummy return HND-SFO the same day. I intend to change the return to NRT-SFO on my desired return date. Out of curiosity, I looked today (after 0900 JST) to change the HND-SFO flight to NRT-SFO and the charge to do so was 0 miles and 100 JPY. The 0 miles is expected as there is no change in seasonality, but why is there a 100 yen charge to change the flight?

probably varying fees/taxes based on the different airport

Appears you may be right as I looked and would receive a 100 yen refund if I changed back to HND. It's certainly a negligible cost, but interesting nonetheless. Thank you.

A quick question concerning changes made by ANA: I'm confirmed for J round trip from JFK in July, and ANA has made a schedule alteration and is asking if I want to confirm or to choose a different flight. It seems that I can pick a new date up to 1 week earlier/later than the original flight. Is there a deadline to make this decision? It seems that the change request doesn't look for award inventory, and could be an opportunity to confirm last-minute trip changes.

Quick data point that I was unaware of:

I originally booked a USA-TYO itinerary entirely in Low Season. However, my actual travel plans has my return flight within Regular Season with my departure flight remaining within Low Season. I transferred in 170,000 miles for a party of 2 via MR in anticipation of being charged 85k each instead of 75k. To my surprise, changing one flight today to Regular Season charged me 5k per person instead of 10k. I wasn't aware that a split seasonality would also split the miles required. Perhaps I didn't read this thread closely enough to see if this had been mentioned earlier, but I hope this data point is useful for those making cross-seasonality bookings in the future.