Award availability question
 

I'm trying to book an award flight for two to the Caribbean later this year and will have to take a standard award one way and saver award the other way. I would like to do a stopover and continue on to Europe at a later date but am about 10K miles short for another two weeks when my credit card miles post.

Award availability on the two flights I need is as follows:
Departure: YN=9
Return: On flight #1 X=6, XN=9, HN=9, YN=9 and on flight #2 all four buckets are =9.

Revenue buckets are as follows:
Departure: C0 D0 Z0 P0 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H0 Q0 V0 W0 S0 T0 L0 K0 G0 N0
Return:
Flight #1: C9 D0 Z0 P0 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K6 G0 N0
Flight #2: C9 D0 Z0 P0 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K9 G9 N9

Questions:

1) Seems like the departure flight would be most at risk but since availability is standard space only available to elites & credit card holders, will I be safe? Basically are those YN standard awards available until the flight is sold out?

2) Based on the award and revenue availability for the return flights, am I safe to hold out? Would the saver award seats disappear without any additional passengers reserving? To be safe I plan to do the farelock once I get within 7 days of the expected credit card miles posting date (so I have about 7-9 more days).

Thanks in advance!

Yes, as YN should track to Y.

Your chances look good, but there are no guarantees.

Availability can change at any time, with or without any additional bookings being made.