Originally Posted by
honu
I'm one of those people who can live without the free stopover in Europe or elsewhere (with AAdvantage they're still allowed in N. Am., in the gateway city). Depending on how much of a premium you're willing to pay over 1/2 R/T for a stopover in Europe, then AAdvantage might work for you in many cases: adding another European destination after a stop in LHR would only cost you 10K in each direction (in economy), so there's your premium.
Good point. It's still a bit high of a premium. I was thinking more like 5K miles more for each one-way.
I can see people (and myself) booking 1-way with AAdv and the return with MP. Will basically give us added flexibility in finding available flights and dates. I still worry that UA will take something back and end up being the one who gets the better of it. It might be an avenue to increase the mileage for all awards by 5K on the one-ways. Just a thought.
I do like one-ways though. In Australia, all domestic flights are purchased as one-way tickets. A return ticket is always buying two 1-ways. You can fly Qantas from MEL-SYD and Virgin Blue or Tiger or Jetstar from SYD-MEL. Internationally, Virgin Blue, V Australia, Jetstar and Tiger al do only one-way bookings to make roundtrips. Only Qantas has the more American system of having a RT cost less than the usually over-expensive two one-ways.