Hi CaliforniaLady - Good luck with your trip! I wouldn't put a lot of money in thinking that this war will be over 5 days! Can you back track to Istanbul and then home? I'm assuming California?

Thank you, Tdiddy12 for your concern. My optimism about the war being over quickly was based on hope, and not on reality. This morning, I called the AA Executive Platinum desk, and the agent said that our return flights were cancelled. For award tickets, an event like this is considered "trip interruption," and they can put you on any flights that have room. She spent an hour with her help desk looking at routing, and you are correct, the best would be for us to get to Istanbul on our own, and then AA will take care of us from there. My husband is not thrilled about spending about $250 each to fly to Istanbul, plus another hotel night, plus he is worried about being in that region at all. There's always next year.

I did want to mention, should you decide to stop in Turkey, the Cappadocia regions is super interesting. Our son and I spent four nights there in 2007. We stayed at a cave hotel, and their driver took us to various sites in the area. Beautiful nature, history, and food.