Originally Posted by
Stgermainparis
I'm curious what most of you all do now that most award programs use one-way tickets. I have a choice of either 2 one-ways on UA or 1 on UA and the other on AA. No advantage to either though AA fees are $175 more total for our 5 pax (and actually that's not nothing). Most of my points are in Chase UR and Amex MR. My gut is telling me to split them up b/c next time around I'll have more options for outbound and inbound. I'm not saving up for a particular trip but those AA points are harder for me to get than UR/UA. On the other hand UR points are more valuable to me bc of their flexibility.
What do you all do? Split things up or go all in with one?
If you're doing award redemptions, then you might often need to do it as two one-ways anyway, even if on the same airline, because you may not be able to find availability in both directions at the same time. That happens to me all the time on longhaul international awards (I don't tend to do domestic awards).
But if you can only find availability in one direction as an award, be aware: Within the US (and maybe some other routes), round trips are priced about that same as two one-ways. But to some overseas destinations, a one way is sometimes
much more expensive than the round trip.
So be aware of what the one-way vs round-trip cash costs are
before you book a one-way award ticket in case you'll never find the one-way award ticket in the other direction. You don't want to get stuck paying more for a one-way paid fare than you would have paid if you had gotten the whole round trip as a paid fare.
And be aware that just because you see availability now when you're asking a question, that doesn't mean that availability will be there by the time you're actually booking. Award availability is all too often fleeting.