Award ticket hold strategy
 

I'm looking at an intl J award on US metal that currently has 1 seat available. I need two seats. I know there is a lot of unpredictability with regard to whether expired holds go back into award inventory etc. but I'm interested in trends. With US Airways, is it generally a good idea to place an award hold on the first seat and see if another seat appears, or just wait and see if 2 seats appear together and risk that the first seat gets snatched up in the meantime?

I have the miles in my account to book immediately, but am not willing to risk paying the redeposit fee if I book one seat and another never materializes. Just wondering what my optimal strategy is given others experiences. Thanks!

Thai Airways was notorious for releasing two seats at a time in business and first class. With US Airways, I have not seen this happen. So for the moment assume there is only a single seat left. And that you are hoping for someone to cancel their award seat and for the flight to be wide open enough that the cancelled seat would go back into the award bucket category.

To be safe, if you are not happy about the redeposit fee - if I were you, I would consider grabbing the single award seat just now, only if there were at least 50% of the seats in J currently open. The more J fills up, the less likely the chances that someone's cancelled award seat will go into that same fare bucket...

US charges the same in miles for one-way award flights as for a roundtrip. May I ask if you're trying to book a roundtrip and, if so, have you been able to find two award seats on the same flight on the return? It would also be helpful to know what your destination is, and whether the passengers would be able to travel on separate flights if need be.