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??

Unless you're Plat, you're SOL on getting the fee waived, especially given the no waivers no favors attitude of the airlines taken from a while back. I'd eat the $50 and get your miles back. FWIW, whether your redeposit online or over the phone, it'll still cost you $50. Plats get this fee waived.

Despite the odds, it never hurts to ask. Good luck!

Do platinum members get the fee waived if the award was booked before platinum was achieved? As a gold, I booked an award back in January before the increase went into effect. The trip is scheduled for November, but I will make platinum sometime in October. So will I have to pay the fee or not if I end up cancelling the ticket?

I think they look at what your status is when you want to redeposit the award. So if you show Plat when you do it, you should be fine.

If you are able to cancel the award ticket online the charge is be $25 per PNR. I've had trouble with this in the past but was recently successful. It will put the fee as an extra charge on the original CC and then refund the taxes paid separately.

I even managed to redeposit two RT tix online with the return flight on DL-coded/DL-metal. So it would appear the online redeposit tool is getting better.

If you are platinum can you get a one way award ticket by flying to your destination and then redepositing the return segment? I'm sure this has been discussed on here before, but I was unable to find it.

From the "Unused Award Ticket" section on nwa.com:
http://www.nwa.com/freqfly/travel/unused.shtml

What happens if a Platinum Elite wants to change the return flight after he has already taken the outbound? Is there still no charge?

Correct theres still no charge. I did this this weekend actually flew out on Wed, and changed my return from Tuesday to Monday on Saturday.

You can also make the change at the airport for no charge on the day of the flight. This can be a problem with some agents. I wanted to get on to an earlier flight from MSP and there was space in my class. I told the agent it to change it, she stated I could go standby, and I stated this was an award ticket so it can be changed without fee. She told me the rules say theres a $50 fee. I pointed out that she was correct, but that I'm plat. so there is no change fee. She called me a liar. Then finally called a supervisor who informed her that I was indeed correct. I got the BP right then for the new flight.

Did she actually call you a liar, or say that you were mistaken? Or did she start singing, "Liar, liar, pants on fire"?

I am confirming this.

I booked a ticket to Egypt in March 2006 a few months ago while I was still gold. Because the later flight from BWI to DTW was not available when I booked it, I called the elite line last week to see if it is available by then. The agent said yes and changed it for me immediately with no problem (I hit platinum two weeks ago).

So it is your current status that counts.