I think that there is a basic flaw in your assumption that a "full fare round trip" ticket MUST be the sum of two one way tickets. Particularly for international travel this is not the case.

It is not necessarily that the fare is discounted because you are returning; it is because a round-trip ticket is a different beast than a one-way ticket.

As far as I know, isn't WN the only airline that will refund part of a RT ticket in a proportional manner if you don't use the full ticket?

Like, most airlines calculate fares as A-B-C with A-B being front heavy in price with B-C costing next to nothing. Thus, if you fly just A-B you get next to nothing back for B-C, but WN is the airline that doesn't front load fares making it unique.

And in terms of an international fare, irrelevent. Most airlines will do A-B front loaded in price.

Not really. If you are really flying a r/t ticket it isn't that the front end is heavily weighted in the price but more that the change fee and potential re-price to a one-way itinerary make the fares for the one way close to or higher than the r/t price. It is possible that the first segment costs more than the second, but that isn't always the case. You have to look at the details of the fare to know for sure.

But getting a refund is a different issue than getting residual value from the ticket.

Here is how I would describe the "Generally Accepted Airline Principles" of Full Fare

• A collection of one way segments that are refundable - in part or in whole
• No requirement for a return to origin
• No change fee
• No minimum or maximum stay
• Fare before association or corporate discounts

If the wording contains both round trip and full fare, I think that what the policy would imply is something modified from full fare as I have described it above:

• Fully refundable
• A fare that may be less than the sum of one way segment fares
• The fare may assume you are returning to your origin

If someone is offering you the ability to be reimbursed for a fully refundable round trip fare, this sounds pretty reasonable. Most might only expect to be reimbursed for the least expensive round trip fare - which would no doubt be considerably less. I'd be happy with what you've got and not loose too much sleep trying to reconcile the full fare and round trip portions of the verbage.