Which, if any, of the FF programs allow an open-jaw award to/from different destinations? For example, US to the South Pacific, returning from South America for 1/2 of the miles required for the outbound award plus 1/2 of the miles required for the return. This situation comes up sometimes when my parents plan cruises. They always end up buying the air from the cruise line at exhorbitant prices and without any way to predictably upgrade with miles.

easily doable with ff-programs that offer one-way awards. KLM Flying Dutchman does.

British Airways also has one way awards on most airlines excpet American Airlines. I have done the exact type of ticket as you using both BA and JL through BA Exec club

Thanks. The most immediate need is for WAS-PPT, LIM-WAS. That could be tough and/or expensive given that BA doesn't allow oneways on AA. I'm also going to look into the mileage-based oneworld awards.

You don't have many choices when flying to PPT. I believe that Air France (Delta miles), Air Tahiti (AA miles), and AirNZ (UA miles or other Star Alliance carrier) are your only options from mainland USA to PPT. Even that, I think that LAX is the only launching place for PPT flights, so you would need to go WAS-LAX-PPT. Finding award availability is really tough, especially when trying to connect to a cruise ship as many other people try to do the same.

So, I would just call DL, AA, and UA and see about doing an award WAS-PPT and then LIM-WAS. See what they say as far as mileage is concerned. Then try and find availability.

Good luck! Let us know how you make out.

Oppps - I just forgot the Hawaiian does Mainland USA-HNL-PPT as well - very limited schedule though.

CX Asia Miles have one-way awards on AA metal.

I was able to get an AA ticket from the US to Argentina and out of Peru (same continent, but two award zones)

1.) it was ticketed at the higher award level (
2.) the open jaw was < the distance of either US-Argentina and US-Peru (which I believe is a common requirement for open jaws- not sure if it applies in this case, though).

I have done open jaws on AA and UA miles in the past. I think most programs let you do either one stopover or one open jaw (although my sister-in-law just flew Quantas to Australia on AA miles and had both an open jaw AND a stopover on her ticket!).

All AA awards (including domestic) and some other airline's awards allow both a stopover and an openjaw - however the OP's question is different as we are dealing with an open-jaw between different award zones.

On some itineraries, one could do different zones with an alliance award - ie with an AA oneworld award where routing doesn't matter, only distance travelled, but oneworld awards require two airlines other than any to be included.

As far as I am aware, all Skyteam awards can be open-jaws. Certainly that's what OK say in their "Skyteam awards chart"

NW allows open jaws. For the trip we are currently taking we flew into AMS and are departing from FCO.

delta allows open jaw on sky choice (double miles) for sure. i just booked phx to venice cruise in between and barcelona to phx.

i am sure you already have the answer you need, and your parents' routing is certainly more exotic than anything i have ever done, but i did 2 FF trips last year that were open jaw: DL: DFW - CDG and back from MAN, and AA: TUS - PTP then ANU - PHX (I arrived in ANU on a sailboat, and had never really legally LEFT Guadaloupe, or entered Antigua for that matter....there were some raised eyebrows at customs, but I pretended not to speak english [despite the american passport], and they let me though....and the less said about all that, i am sure, the better)

Southwest's round-trip award tickets can be used as two one-way award tickets. But they obviously can't get you to South America or the South Pacific (just to the South USA ).

A couple of cruise lines (Raddisson and Windstar) offer free RT airfare for some of their cruises that start in Tahiti, make sure you check that out. We were deciding beteen two of them and a china trip this week, so for example, August is one of those times with the free air.