  In the present work, we study the OZI-allowed three body open flavor decay
properties of higher vector charmonium and bottomonium states with an extended
quark pair creation model. For the bottomonium system, we get that (i) the
$BB\pi$ and $B^*B^*\pi$ partial decay widths of the $\Upsilon(5S)$ state are
consistent with the experiment, and the $BB^*\pi$ partial decay width of the
$\Upsilon(5S)$ state is smaller but very close to the Belle's experiment.
Meanwhile, (ii) the $BB^*\pi$ and $B^*B^*\pi$ decay widths of $\Upsilon(11020)$
can reachs $2\sim3$ MeV. In addition, (iii) for the most of higher vector
charmonium states, the partial decay widths of the $DD^*\pi$ and $D^*D^*\pi$
modes can reach up to several MeV, which may be observed in future experiments.
