Award Tickets - Maximum Length between flights?
 

I was recently considering the outside possibility of using FF miles for a longer trip- say for 6 months or more. But then I realized that I wasn't sure if FF tickets have a "maximum stay" requirement. I tried looking it up on UA & NW, but didn't really get anywhere. The closest I got was with UA, that both your dates have to be within the 330 day booking window. Of course, I've already read tons on FT about getting your first date put on hold and then adding dates later, etc, etc.

So, does anyone know what the general rule of thumb is for award tickets? Is there an official maximum length, or can you keep changing it to extend the time? And, practically, what would you say is the longest you would ever attempt?

(Of course, if your airline of choice does offer one-way flights at half the cost of round-trip this is really a moot point...but most don't seem to.)

The rules are published on the airline's web sites. Typically, the return must be used within one year. You may be subject to fees if/when you change the return from the aforementioned 330 day mark to the 1 year mark.

1 year
 

normally the award is valid for 1year from the first flight you take.

LH and UA have both 1year ticket validty, you can fly on 1.1.xxx and fly back the next year on 1.1.xxxx
dp

Not necessarily moot point. You may want to lock in flight that is only offered seasonally (flights may be unable to be booked later), ahead of possible FFP devaluation, or if award availability is tough to find, amongst other reasons.

I obviously was not looking in the right place on the web sites, then. Can you point me in the right direction?

It's included with the rules for each award type. For example, if you go to co's award chart, you'd find that a series "o" award (US48) is valid for one year from date of issue. If you pull up a ticket online, you'd have a link to the specific fare rules for that itinerary.

For example, plugging in ewr-lax (standard coach award), you get a link (before you purchase) with the compete rules for that itinerary:

On AA, it's valid for 1 year from date of booking, not date of outbound. So that becomes an issue if the route you want is one of those that needs to be booked well in advance to secure the seats.

I thought that was the case with CO as well... but in reviewing the rules (posted above), there seems to be some contradictions:

[CODE]Maximum Stay FARE RULES TEXT
TRAVEL FROM LAST STOPOVER MUST COMMENCE NO LATER THAN 12
MONTHS AFTER DEPARTURE FROM FARE ORIGIN.
NOTE -
CERTIFICATES/TICKETS ARE VALID FOR ONE YEAR
FROM THE DATE THE REWARD IS ISSUED.
ALL TRAVEL MUST BE COMPLETED BY THE
EXPIRATION DATE NOTED ON THE REWARD
CERTIFICATE/TICKET.[CODE]

So, it's possible that you must complete the journey within one year from ticket issue... or perhaps the maximum stay rule applies, which would seem to allow outbound travel up to 1 year from issue, and the return commence 1 year from the outbound. Perhaps someone more versed in the rules can weigh in.

While things may have changed since we did it, we took a year-long reward trip three years ago, booked on CO miles with NW and KLM flts. We flew the first half in July 2002 (EWR-AMS-JNB) and continued on a OW RTW from there. Our RTW ended in CPT in July 2003, where we returned home on the original reward ticket. We were even able to change the date of our return flts after the first segments were flown. The whole thing was booked in maybe Jan/Feb 2002, at the 200,000 mile Easypass level.

Robin