I’ll be flying this baby soon enough!
This may come as a surprise to some, and be common sense to others, but I thought I’d share a brief post about the benefits of one-way awards.
You see, the benefit of one-way awards is that you can change the outbound without changing the inbound and vice versa. Sometimes, when you try to change one direction of a round trip, you have to release your seat on the direction you aren’t changing, which incurs risk that said seat / award availability may in fact either get scooped up or not go back into inventory in time for you to scoop it back up.
There are some airlines that only allow round trip awards, and for those, you really don’t have a choice. But for airlines like American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the price is the same whether you book it as two one-way awards or a round trip award (other than perhaps any ticketing fees that American Airlines wants to throw at you).
There are also some airlines that give you additional benefits if you do a round trip, like United on their awards. If you plan to leverage those benefits (like stopovers), then by all means, book a round trip, but beware of the risks, if you plan to tweak your reservation in the future.
The Bottom Line
If you think you might make changes to an award trip, then try to book your trip as one-way awards, unless you’re leveraging something only available for round trip awards. Reason being, is that you can tweak one direction without putting the other direction at risk. It keeps things simple.
I always book one ways for intl’ travel but have cone across some problems because certain countries do not let you enter on a one way. in those cases ive had to purchase a refundable one-way to the nearest country and usually pay a 10% refund fee. in all the awards i have used, united and their partners seem to have the best one way long layovers to explore a different city, commonly 17hrs (beijing,vamcouver,shanghai,taipei etc;)
@Adam – I’d imagine that having 2 one-ways and appropriate documentation would possibly prevent the refundable ticket requirement? e.g. flying in to PEK, with a connecting flight elsewhere?
And if you book two one ways using AA miles and you have to xl the trip you are out double the xl fee. That’s an extra 150. for the first person on the PNR. I very rarely book one ways and have never had any problems making changes on RT tickets.
Fair point – I forget that I have status that wipes those change fees out.
I have mixed feelings about this. For the most part, I book as two one ways (and even paid Southwest tickets I book one way), but we recently had United flights booked as two one ways during a huge snow storm. We could change the departure without problem since it was during the storm change window, but the return wasn’t covered by those days. Luckily we didn’t need to change the return date. I also wondered if they would honor a trip in vain if you had two one ways.
@Rachel – that’s a good point. Some airlines will associate reservations, even if they are one-ways, but not all. I still tend to think, if you might change your trip, and the airline process is such that they must release the space then regrab it, you are safer with 2 one-ways. But it is very situation dependent.
Thanks…What are the “benefits” that United gives for booking roundtrip Award tix?
@StevesMiles – free stop-over and I think double open jaws. Meaning you can start and end your round trip from two different cities, and stop-over for more than 23 hours and 49 minutes in the course of the trip.