One-way awards on any US program?
 

Does anyone know if any US airlines allow one-way flight award redemption?

If this discussion doesn't belong on "The Buzz", please suggest a more suitable forum.

I know that American does. If you don't see a one way award code in the award chart, call the FF program number and ask.

Cheers,

birdstrike

AA, CO, DL, NW, UA, US do not offer a one way travel award. Some of them may offer a one way upgrade award - I know AA offers a one way upgrade.

SW automatically issues two one-way coupons that can be used separately.

UA discontinued round trip upgrade awards a while back and only offers one way upgrade awards now.

Southwest is the only carrier that I know which offers the abilty to redeem "one-way award flights". Their award tickets are actually (2) one-way tickets. So you could fly from Los Angeles to Phoenix and return Las Vegas to Baltimore. They do this to allow for people who are using other methods of transportation between flights.

At United, you just have to burn a r/t award ticket. Your departure/return cities have to be the same.



------------------
Ken in Sacramento

American West used to offer one-way reward tickets around 10 years ago. I don't know if they still offer them.

CO offers one-way upgrade awards, but not one-way reward tickets.

------------------
In Economy...no one can hear you scream!

http://www.denycontinentalthefreddie.com/

The ONLY airline to offer ONE WAY award tickets is KLM, and they are not an American airline.

ALL KLM awards are automatically one way, as they have this weird system where you have to "buy" each flight seperately.

Its great If you want one segment, one way only, but sucks for any transfers...

Yes - AA has a OW award that allows you unlimited segements based on miles. This can can be oneway in Econ, Biz or First. I have used it.

Using this award on AA, there are no restrictions on direction of travel but constraints include:
- You cannot stop over in the originating city
- YOu need to fly at least 2 other OW airlines in addition to AA
- You cannot connect through the same city more than twice
- The total mileage cannot exceed award mileage (understandable) http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Other OW airlines have a similar award too.

American also allows open jaw domestic awards (at the same cost as Round Trip). The benefit over RT is that you are NOT required to return to the originating airport or city as some of the purchased tickets do. Many other US domestic airlines allow this too. Unfortunately it is not half of RT.

As others have noted here, the upgrades on AA are mostly now one way (half of RT).

Also, sometimes AA and others have special OW award redemptions. I don't know of a pattern here.

I wonder why airlines don't allow a one way reward ticket for 1/2 the miles 12,500 or even 15,000 for one way. How can we get the airlines to consider this?

------------------
DtG

There's been several times when one way award tickets would have been very handy. I still don't understand why they are not allowed.

I got bit by this last year, was spending sometime in asia on a cheapie ticket. The day before I was set to leave Thailand to travel to Singapore to fly home, had a medical emergancy and ended up spending a week in the hospital. Missed my (United, non-changable) flight in Singapore and wanted to use miles to return home. not only could I not get a one way ticket for half the miles, there were no round trip saver tickets available from bangkok for several weeks. Didn't have enough miles for a standard round trip and was too sick to think clearly enough to come up with any good schemes.

Ended up flying first class on Northwest for less than the price of coach on United.

I had always assumed that you could do one way award tickets.

As an aside, the medical attention in Thailand was great and I paid for it with my Mileage Plus MasterCard, so all was not lost!

although not a us based airline, cx also offers one-way award travel.

TravelManKen. UA allows open jaw travel, i.e., LAX-BUF-SFO on Mileage Plus award tickets. I had checked on this a few months ago, and reconfirmed it with the 1K desk today. The same rules that would apply to a paid open jaw itinerary apply, i.e., the open jaw has to be shorter than the shortest flown segment.

Carl:

Wouldn't a doctor's note have saved you the expense?

That would rank as about the worst example of outright untruth I've seen on this board.

AN and QF both do one-way, open-jaw and return reward tickets. (However, they restrict rewards on partner airlines to return tickets.)