Originally Posted by JS
No, the reason it works is because you are using ATL as a stopover. If you wanted a real stopover somewhere else or wanted an open jaw, it would fail because RDU-LAX via ATL is not available thanks to the stupid journey control.
Actually, no. Journey Control only enforces the married segments. It does not dictate a legal connection/stopover. Those are determined by the routing rules (which Delta has restricted on most all fares including award tickets). The Journey Control software, if it was in place with award bookings, would have thrown back an error when trying to piece together RDU-ATL and ATL-LAX because the two segments married together have no N class available. However, each flight has N available separately, and since Journey Control is not affecting award bookings, each flight can be selected separately and redeemed at the SkySaver rate.