I sent my proposed itinerary for a rtw trip to LH, which responded with a provisional booking. The total mileage for the trip would be around 24,000 miles so we are talking YRWSPCL. A couple of the flights I had requested had been changed, namely, instead of traveling DEL-SIN-NRT-LAX (all on SQ) on 7-8 Aug., LH scheduled me DEL-BKK-LAX (on TG) on 9 Aug. I checked availability on seatcounter and found that in fact there was no availability in H for either 7 or 8 Aug. between DEL and LAX.

Although there is no reason I need to be in LAX on the 8th, I am not wild about hanging around DEL an extra two days. I saw availability in M on both the 7th and 8th. I'm not sure if it is worth �400 to me, but would it be possible to pay for a YRWSTAR1 even if I am flying fewer than 26,000 miles?

Secondly, how likely is it that additional seats will open up in H between now and the end of July?

As I noticed you are LH Senator, I would ask LH to open the seats for you. I once ran into this situation with AC and as AC SE, AC opened the seats for me. Might be more difficult with TG but it is worth trying and saving the money.

You can always buy up, it doesn't matter if using much less than 29k miles. However I'd first check if they'd release seats, perhaps an alternate routing may work?

There aren't a ton of options out of Delhi; either SIN, BKK or ICN. All of the possibilities I saw on seatcounter had H0 for one or both legs on the 7th and 8th. I have until July 16 to book the reservation or lose it so maybe I'll keep checking availability for a few days and ask LH to open up a seat.

For the sake of bringing closure to this topic, I checked seatcounter the day after LH sent me the proposed itinerary. TG showed availability in H for the Aug. 8 so I called LH and they rebooked me. Although the LH office in Italy was able to rebook the flights, they could not issue the ticket. The ticket could only be issued by the LH RTW office in Germany. Easy enough to do, however. ^