I'm planning a RTW trip. I priced out RTW tickets from the major alliances, and they are *significantly* more expensive than buying one-way tickets, so I'm planning to string together a bunch of one way flights to get me around the world.

I did hit one snag though. On my final leg, NRT->JFK, all of the one-way direct flights are only available in Y. American, for example, wants upwards of $5000 for a one way coach ticket, whereas I can buy a roundtrip ticket for $1200, since it's not refundable. Seems completely idiotic to me, since I could buy 4 roundtrip tickets for the price of a one way ticket.

I was wondering:
- Why are NRT-JFK open-jaw tickets only sold in Y?
- Is there any way around this restriction?
- Will anything happen if I buy a roundtrip ticket, and don't take the return leg?

Have you tried booking with a Japanese travel agent?
There are threads in this forum that discuss doing this.

Also, RTW tickets are discussed in depth in the dedicated alliance forums as there are techniques to radically bring down the price by departing from a selection of countries. Have you checked these options also?

And, yes, despite it contravening T&Cs you can generally discard the return leg of the flight.

I just booked a flight to Japan and found that (ugh!)LAX was the cheapest departure point by far, at least $600 less than other West Coast departures, cheap enough that I save money by flying in and out of LAX and watching for bargain fares from MSP>LAX.

Try a NRT>LAX>JFK itinerary.

I'm doing the same thing on my trip. Even with the separate domestic tickets it was $900/ticket cheaper to fly MSP-NRT via LAX.

If you don't care about carriers or routings, looks like MH is selling NRT-LAX o/w for $591 and LAX-JFK is $149 o/w on just about every carrier. Takes more time but saves you a considerable about of money over a o/w or buying a throwaway r/t on AA.

SQ flies NRT-LAX and sells a one way ticket for around USD 800, IIRC. Also, during the C Johnson debacle, I noticed that AC has reasonable one ways to Vancouver.

But I really don't see that buying separate tickets is going to be a better option than a Star RTW. There is a Star Lite option for economy. Now, buying them from the US has always been the highest price. Actually, from Japan is among the cheapest in business despite the strong yen. Around USD 8,000. I bought one last fall and managed to squeeze in a RT to NZ, which would cost USD 3,000 round trip in peak season in economy.

So if you plan a RTW well then you can add in additional side trips.