Originally Posted by CIT85

Open jaw and/or stopover itinerary is one the reasons why FT award tickets are valuable. In your cases, you could have flown into Dublin (stopover), onto London (destination), and returned from London all on one award ticket, if your FT program has the right combination of partners (Ireland is tougher). You need to have one partner airline to fly from SFO to Dublin, and then Dublin to London, and then London to SFO. Same thing with AMS and Budapest pair.

I'm more familiar with Star Alliance. I just booked a vacation for next July RIC-PEK (stopover), PEK-BKK (destination), BKK-RIC all on one award itinerary on 4 different *A partner airlines in Business Class. You have to spend some time learning all about SkyTeam (for DL) and what you can do with the SkyTeam awards.

Open jaw paid tickets are not necessarily more expensive, you just need to do some planning.