As most of you know, there are a number of exceptions to the OWE origin-destination rule that allow one to have their last flight be into a different city or country than from where the trip began.

My question is: For those cases where that exception is published, does one still have to include the final destination back to origin surface segment in their 20 allowable segments? Or, can one end with the last flight segment as the 20th? (Say starting in one country in Africa, and ending the trip on the 20th segment with a flight into a different country in Africa.)

The OWE online validator requires that a final segment (either flight or surface) back to origin be entered to complete any routing through that program, but I'm uncertain if this is just a quirk of the validator or represents an actual hard and fast rule that the final surface segment must be included in the total segment count.