Originally Posted by JDiver
A round trip signifies, whether you connect to or after, precisely that - you fly point A to B and back. AFAIK, you may fly a - A - B - c - B - A - d, but you must include the round trip on the same ticket, as I understand the concept "round trip", also called "return" in some countries. What you are suggesting is some kind of modified "open jaw", which normally will not work when a round trip is required.
One last question on this. If the flight outgoing shows up as a mci-ord-iad but the one back says iad-mci but actually does make a stop, will I get the bonus. I guess this is just a stopover? The boarding pass would say ORD in returning?