[waxhawfamily]

We used miles to travel on trip 1, but couldn't get a flight out on FF for trip 2. With ours, we could change the travel dates for a fee - we confirmed this before booking our trip 1 FF tickets.

Trip 1 didn't change, but on trip 2, we were actually able to come home 1 day early. We had purchased tickets using Delta's adoption rates, so there was no change fee. Even if there had been a fee, we would have come out even by saving a hotel night and extra meals.

If your FF program will not allow changes, even for a fee, you will be taking a risk. Our region fairly consistently, waives the 10 days. We would have used the points if we could, knowing that worst case, we would forfiet the return flight and have to buy tickets to travel home.

Oh, one more thing; we were using USAir, and they don't have a presence in Russia (no office to walk in to like Delta, and others). If we did need to change, we would have had to make changes over the phone to secure seats on another flight. Then we would have to overnight our original return tickets to someone back home, have then drive to the airport to turn them in, pay the change fee, and get our new tickets, then overnight them back to us. USAir doesn't allow you to travel out of the USA on e-tickets using FF. You have to have a paper ticket, and they won't reissue new paper tickets without the originals back. This would have been a huge hassle, and just this process alone could extend an already long trip. There could also be a problem with return trip availability.

Our Delta adoption rate tickets ran us around 5k for two adult round trip, and one child one-way (all changeable).