Originally Posted by
HeadInTheClouds
I know what they are, and I definitely use them - UA's 'either/or' stopover/jaw rule used to annoy me greatly. When AA made this change, I initially had the same feelings as you're expressing here. But once AA and UA went to full one way awards, the dramatic impact of that was frankly overwhelming. It just opened up all sorts of different options that made award travel so much easier.
Combining carriers for award tickets, combining awards with cheap paid legs, multi-leg trips, waiting out better routings leg by leg/carrier by carrier, etc. Booking an award is a totally different game for me today thanks to one ways, and at most it has cost me an occasional extra intra-Europe 10k award to regain a stopover.
Just don't under-estimate how liberating this change could be. I wouldn't change the AA program back for the old stopover rules. Though, hat's off to UA
. There is no reason this swap has to be an "either/or".
To be honest, the bigger problem with DL would be the fuel taxes on return legs/segments in Europe.
If you use the DL stopover/open jaw feature to its fullest, I can't imagine you would continue to say what you do, but as usual YMMV. In fact, I already book "one way" awards with DL to a degree. I also save hundreds of dollars with the stopover provision. Example: Anchorage to King Salmon, AK costs +-$400 round trip. Add that to an MSP-ANC round trip and instantly I save $400 on one award ticket, not to mention the amount I save on the MSP-ANC round trip.
And I wouldn't be going to ANC next month if it weren't for DL's stopover rule. Basically can add a 'free' trip to ANC to my European award ticket. For ME, WAY better than a OW award.