I've been combing the magical interwebs and can't seem to find a clear answer on this. Has anyone figured out what happens if you book a flight (or hotel/car) with miles and more miles and then cancel, through the travel center, after they would have otherwise expired? Do they redeposit in your account? Do they go to the great expired miles place in the sky? If they do return, is the calendar reset?

Better to look or ask on the M & M forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/lufth...iles-more-495/ LH M&M miles have a 3 year hard expiry according to the wiki

I do not know the answer for M & M, but typically a booking/reservation followed by cancellation does not reset expiration. It if did it would be too easy to keep miles from expiry.

in my experience, there is usually a fee to "redeposit" the miles back into your account if you cancel - at least, such is the case with Delta. I"m guessing it's similar with other programs too, otherwise this would be a really easy hack to keep your miles from expiring. of course, the fee depends on the ff program, so if you have enough miles, it might be a fee you're willing to pay to keep those miles alive (for delta it's about $150).

I figured this was too good to be true. Since they were expiring (and my SPG transfer didn't happen in time to use them for a flight), I went ahead and booked for a hotel that I was planning a stay for anyway. It wasn't a good use of miles of course, but it does save me some money on the hotel stay. Interestingly, I was able to purchase the difference in miles needed for the room for a bizarrely cheap price (17,000 for $60). I'm going to call in a couple of weeks and see what my options are for canceling/redeposit. If so, it would be a win. If not, it was the best value I could have hoped for for a non-flight redemption (1 cent/mile). I'll report back on what I find out.

OK. Just to follow up my own post. The news is mixed, but a little positive. I called customer service and they weren't too helpful but they suggested that if I cancelled that the miles I had put in initially would be returned to me but the miles I "purchase" as part of the cash portion of the purchase would not get deposited into my account - I would just get a cash refund. I went online and cancelled and this is exactly what happened. The $60 was returned to my credit card and the miles were returned to my account.

The silver lining, the miles didn't expire. The new expiration date is the end of the current quarter rather than the end of the last quarter. So looks like there is a way to grant a slight extension to your expiring miles. Who knows if this would work repeatedly. I'm guessing not at some point. Now I've got to try and use up the initial miles.

Added Malaysia, Garuda Indosian, EVA Air, and Thai, thus completing all the Citi TYP transfer partners.

Wiki updated toI probably missed a few things here & there, but this should be a substantial improvement.

Choice went from hard to soft but expiry period got cut in about half
 

I just realized Choice Privileges (hotel program) was out of date, so I updated it. The reason I kept a summary of how it used to be is because the expiration went from a longer hard one to a shorter soft one.

I updated the wiki to add a warning about Air Canada Aeroplan, that despite activity every 12 month resetting expiration, the plan for Air Canada to split from Aeroplan may have long-term implications that relate to expiration, even if they are not technically expiration.

In the wiki, I added Jet Airways JetPrivilege, and updated Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles, since Citi TYP has added those two as transfer partners.

I just added Avianca (AV) LifeMiles to the wiki, since it just joined Citi TYP as a redemption partner.

I updated the wiki for the changes coming to Avianca on April 15: Redeeming will no longer defer (reset) expiration, only earning will. Furthermore, expiration is shortening to 12 months (from 24) except for those with Avianca status or the Avianca credit card.

Updated the IHG info to re-insert that Gold/Platinum/Spire members points never expire. That seems to have been lost in one of the previous updates.

Not sure I like the change of format, where a substantial number of entries have links to other FT threads/wiki that discuss the individual loyalty systems' expiration. The point of the wiki was to be a one stop definitive source of expiry info.....state the expiry...state how to extend it (if possible)...and point to the T&C of the relevant programme so as those interested can see the formal details. Pointing to other threads that may or may not have good/conflicting/anecdotal information, dilutes the authority of this wiki.

I guess that's the shortcoming of these wikis, a format that has been crowd-sourced and accepted over a few years, can be unilaterally changed.

Another thing missing from the Wiki is waivers. For example, a co-branded credit card of lifetime status may waive expiration for some programs.

Perhaps you could add what's missing. The current format works fine for me.