Originally Posted by
indufan
Let me first explain, I don't know the answer on award tickets. And I don't really know the other otherwise. Nearly forever, conventional wisdom has said if the outbound is changed then the entire ticket must be redone. I thought that for years and most agents did too. However, there was a statement in the rules that said "attempt to keep as ticketed" or something like that on changes. I don't know if it applies currently or not and don't know if it ever applied to award tickets.
There's no such language in award fare rules (which are found at the "Fare Rules" link whenever you price out an award). There is language that they can use original issue date for measuring Adv. purchase requirements when changing return after departure of journey. However, pricing on return options will also depend on award fare bucket availability in addition to meeting Adv. purchase requirements of the various award levels.
As far as booking one-way's, the lowest-level US international D1 awards now require a roundtrip booking and can't be booked as one-way's. For US-EU D1 awards, these are the 105K each-way CSVR1050 90-day advance purchase awards (the 'R' in the fare basis code indicates the roundtrip booking requirement). While these can also be booked as open-jaws, they can't be combined with partner awards in one direction (partner low-level is now 120K miles each-way with a 60-day advance purchase requirement) -- you must book DL awards in both directions to meet the roundtrip booking requirement.
Not that this will do most people any good, but just noticed there are currently seasonal roundtrip D1 awards to Tokyo available for 124K (SEA), 132K (LAX, MSP, DTW) and 140K (ATL) total roundtrip. They have 7-day min-stay (and Mon-Thu travel on some) booking requirements, but no advance purchase requirements. Unfortunately, the seasonality section on these D1 award fares only extends to March 31st.