An Often Overlooked Tactic to Optimize Your Comfort and Value—Via Numerous Options
Last month we looked closely at “partner mileage award chart” anomalies and offered a quick course on how to uncover opportunities that can amount to a free upgrade. This month, I’m going to show you another—and often over-looked—flight path to award travel: The one-way award.
Getting two flights (outbound and return)—for schedules and dates I can live with and in the degree of comfort I’m after—is not always easy: Single airline loyalty programs have “discounted award availability issues.” In fact, a mathematician would tell you that the odds of getting two ideal flights are “exponentially more difficult” than getting just one.
Perhaps that’s how I’ve come to arrive that the perfect number of flights to look for from any given loyalty program for a single itinerary is—can you guess?
One.
If you think about it a minute, how often is the best routing and most comfort—for both the outbound and return— provided by the same carrier?
That’s why I frequently turn to one-way awards. Simply put, they increase my chances of getting a First or Business Class seat at a lower award-cost level. Here’s a spectrum of scenarios, along with an explanation of how to exploit the one-way award for each. (See the chart on page 11 that lists the carriers offering one-way awards.)
When a Round-trip Saver Award is Not Available
Let’s say you’re flying Los Angeles-Paris in Business Class, and you’ve found that only American has a “saver” Business Class award (50,000 miles) on the departure. If you stick with American “all the way” you’ll have to buy an unrestricted “anytime” award for the return (100,000 miles), bringing the cost to 150,000 miles. If you were to look around before you book on the other hand, you may find that United has a 50,000-mile saver award for the return. Grab the one-ways and save the 50,000 AA miles for another day.
When a Round-trip Saver Award is Not Available in the Same Class of Service
Fly a different class of service on each leg, say First Class out and Business Class back. This can net you First Class for less than Business, when First Class is available at the saver rate and Business Class is only available at the standard (unrestricted award) rate, a frequent occurrence.
When You Want the Best Routing and Best Premium Seats
Let’s say you have points in Starwood’s program, Amex Membership Rewards, or multiple airline accounts (which we highly recommend), and you will be traveling New York-London, but returning from Frankfurt, and you want to fly non-stop and get the best seat on each flight leg. That means First Class going out, given that you’ll be flying overnight, and maybe Business Class coming back (good enough for a long day flight). The candidates are pretty easy to identify: British Airways to London and Singapore Airlines from Frankfurt. Each belongs to a different alliance (oneworld and Star, respectively), so you can’t book a round-trip award. One-way awards are tailor-made for this situation.
When a Partner Saver Round-trip Award is Not Available on Your Preferred Carrier, but is Via the Partner’s Own Program
Let’s say you found free restricted award travel Chicago Frankfurt in First Class on United (cost: 67,500 miles), but you can only get an unrestricted award (cost: 147,500 miles) on United for the return. That comes to 215,000 miles.
However, in checking the mileage website of Lufthansa, a United partner, you’ve found that it does have a saver award for your return date, but it’s not available through United miles. This is when it pays to have a mileage bankroll with Starwood, as you can turn the points into the 85,000 Lufthansa miles you need for the one-way return award, and book the one-way award outbound with United. Total cost: 152,500 miles, 62,500 fewer than booking a round-trip award on United.
When You Only Need A One-way Ticket
The best example is for a cruise that departs from a city so near you that you don’t have to fly to get there. For instance, you take the Queen Mary 2 from New York to London and fly back in Business Class, say on British Airways for only 40,000 miles. Many programs (i.e. Delta and US Airways) will charge you for a round-trip.
When You’re Flying to One City and Returning From Another
It’s called an open-jaw itinerary and it’s perfect for one-way awards. Cruises often require open-jaw itineraries, by the way. For example, you fly from New York to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to catch a cruise that ends up in Buenos Aires, and fly back from there.
The Disadvantages of One-Way Awards
Most airlines that offer them don’t allow the free en-route stopover that they do with some round-trip awards. Let’s say you’re traveling to Europe from the West Coast and you’d like to stop in New York on the way. Such an itinerary would cost you three one-way awards versus one round-trip award on a carrier that permits free stopovers.