i recall seeing an email from continental that mentioned that they will allow one way reward. i called the service center and the person i spoke to said he recalls something similar but didn't have anything at his finger tips and even asked some of his colleagues who didn't know. he put his money on jan 1 2010. anyone have any details? thx.

There has not been an announcement of "true" oneway rewards via email or any other scheme. There has been discussion of permitting the bookings online without requiring the return segment but that they would still be at the full price. I haven't seen any follow-up on that. And CO has made a number of announcements about the scheme for next year and adding one-way rewards in wasn't one of them. I don't really expect it to happen anytime soon.

PS- Welcome to FlyerTalk!!

thanks for the reply and the welcome. i'm a long time reader.

i think what i'm remembering is one of the star alliance announcement emails in which future enhancements were discussed and one way rewards was one of them.

so, your suspicion is that even when they allow this online or via phone it will cost easy pass amounts and saver pass won't be available as an option? i prefer continental over any airline but i do like the fact that american airlines allows the purchase of a one way award at any mileage level based on availability.

The AA one-way rewards are nice but they don't have the open-jaw and stopover flexibility that CO has. There are always trade-offs in these schemes and you have to pick the one that works best for you overall.

CO does currently allow one-way reward bookings via the phone but you still pay the r/t price. You can do a one way in the premium cabin and put the return in Y for a slight discount but otherwise not much doing.

I'm sorry but that's just so typically Larry Kellner.

Pay the full price! Get half the travel! It's our latest innovation to the program! (even if we're only grudingly letting you have it).

Smith Street must really just take us for a pack of dupes.

Actually is it "so typically" the vast majority of the frequent flier programs in the world. But go ahead with your idea that everything LK does is to screw the customer. It certainly is cute.

I have to agree with sbm12, otherwise when AA came out with this they wouldn't have campaigned on the fact this was setting them apart from most other airlines.

AA? B6? AC? WN? AS? YX? FL? Don't they do have one-way awards?

AA is one of the biggest airlines in the world, and WN is the largest domestic carrier in the U.S.

My issue isn't so much that CO does or doesn't have one-way awards, but it's the characteristic chutzpah of "innovating" the program by letting you book half the benefit for the full cost...

I don't think LK is screwing the customer so much as he is taking us for a pack of dupes. Just like his ridiculous premium section, or, even better, his non-existent "elite" seating benefit, which consists of whomever gets the window and aisle seats first in the "premium" section gets to call them "elite" seating, although, in all fairness to CO, the scare quotes appear even on their own website...

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US.../services.aspx

You've named a few. There are many more. And most carriers do not permit one-way rewards. Naming seven is great but I can easily name many more that do not permit one-ways. Hence my statement that the majority of the programs work that way. I don't believe that statement to be false at all.

The "innovation" isn't really actually new. They've talked about it a bit and people here have asked so I repeated the information that is known to help those customers. It isn't about CO taking its customers as a bunch of rubes or anything else. It is simply about understanding the program's rules.

As I mentioned above, CO permits stopovers and open jaws. Sure, the open jaws don't matter as much with one-way redemptions but the stopovers can be a HUGE value proposition. For me having the value of the stopover outweighs the lack of one-way awards. After all, I generally come home eventually.

I don't dispute that CO might have some rules that are better in their award structure than other carriers.

But this so-called "one-way award" is obviously not one of them. It's just another sham. Why would anyone pay full price for half the product? Why?

You're right, it's not really an innovation, it's just a bunch of bunk.

You've heard of 2-for-1? This is a 1-for-2...a one-fer...

I am not disputing the merits of one progran vs another. Each program has its pluses and minuses. But although you have appointed yourself as the arch-defender of anything CO does no matter how absurd, even you must see that, if nothing else, it's horrible p.r. for the airline to come up with such a formula.

And it will lead to nothing else but more needless confrontation between irate customers and the long-suffering, hard-working front-line employees who constantly have to take all the heat for the whacky ideas that come out of Smith Street.

I mean, I understand the need to keep the value of the miles in the house's favor, but, come on, do at least a little discounting, the way BMI and a number of the foreign carriers do, say 50% on the return leg...

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Well, in the interest of accuracy, BD's program actually offers true one-way rewards. Perhaps you are thinking of CX that slightly discounts (or surcharges, depending on how you look at it) the one-way rewards.

I don't defend everything CO does. I think they have plenty of policies that suck and I say so when they come up. This one, however, isn't really a negative in my book. Given the option between one way rewards with no stopovers (like most the carriers you cited earlier) or r/t rewards with stopovers I'll take the latter. I think they present a better value.

More to the point, I go into the situation well educated so that I can make a decision based on the rules that the program has. The OP asked about those rules and I gave him the information. At then you jumped in with a typical rant about how CO hates its customers and thinks we are all idiots. The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least this one doesn't require months of chiropractic treatment for you.

I agree with sbm12 that the introduction of one-way awards would likely lead to shifts in the overall value proposition of OnePass that would result in a net negative for myself and many other FFers who primarily use FF awards for multi-destination international trips, taking full advantage of en route stopovers and long (and often, multiple ) connections. I have not yet seen a major legacy airline, in North America or elsewhere, introduce pure one-way FF awards (at 50% of RT) without also featuring limitations that often result in additional miles being spent, or otherwise frustrate the usage of the miles. BD does fuel surcharges and tries to bar partner carrier redemptions (and even changes) less than a week before departure. And keep in mind, "limitations" need not only refer to stopovers; COers benefit from having a pretty generous routing ability on awards, and that would likely go away under one-way awards as well.

You're discussing two completely, unrelated elements of the program.

It's not a matter of either or.

Sure, I agree with you that stopovers are better than one-way rewards. Who would ever use a one-way reward (actually, I have, but that's a different story).

In this case CO gives you the option of stopovers. Good. Then they say you can book a one-way reward but you have to pay full price. This last has strictly nothing to do with the stopover feature and it most certainly sucks.

The big one.

How could it not? It's a one-fer (two). Who, in their right mind, would say a one-fer doesn't suck? Who?

Is CO OP a better program than most U.S. frequent flyer programs? Sure, why not? But this policy is not one reason why.

All we're discussing is whether providing the customer with what, for all intents and purposes, is a completely vacuous benefit is in any way legitimate.

How could it possibly be anything but a load of hooey?

100% agreed. But who else, Heathrow, has introduced this program feature at 100% of RT?

In theory, you're right. But in practice, airlines going to pure one-way awards often do force a member tradeoff between oneway redemption and stopover/permissive routings.