Originally Posted by
HeathrowGuy
In theory, you're right. But in practice, airlines going to pure one-way awards often do force a member tradeoff between oneway redemption and stopover/permissive routings.
One more note about this issue. It's really about giving the "house" every bit of advantage it can possibly wrench out of the players.
If one-way awards were exactly 50% of rt awards, then there would be no drop in value to either customer or company.
Fly one way and you'll pay half. Fly roundtrip and you'll pay full. What's the difference?
Of course, the house doesn't like to play nice, so if they're going to make it easier for players to spend their miles, they're going to--at the same time--make it harder for them to spend their miles.
In other words, customers are going to pay for the convenience of one-way awards.
Fair enough. That's capitalism baby. But 100%? Where's the incentive to the customer? Where?