One-ways aren’t free, but they make the ticket cheaper.

I have a confession. I used to make fun of the “free one-way” awards people talk about. For a few reasons… 1) I’d rather use my stopover in Europe on my way to Asia than use it for a domestic flight. The value is just so much greater using the stopover internationally. 2) I thought, it’s not a “trick” or free… it’s just a matter of knowing the rules. You make your hometown the stopover, and then open-jaw to another destination. That’s it. and 3) This gives me a destination I have to find a way back from. This is a two part problem: A) Was I really going to use my miles that way? and B) This is fine if I’m going to use Avios to get back from Hawaii, but I’m using United miles for a direct flight, it’s a waste.

In the end, I got over myself and quit whining. The truth was that even if it’s not for me, other people might be able to use it. Maybe they don’t have as much time to see Europe and Asia on one vacation.

I realized a long time ago you could open-jaw from Europe to the Caribbean and save miles (and have to one-way back). But then I got curious as to other ways you can use one-way’s to save miles...

First, if you’re not familiar with the concept, let me explain it real quick:

You can use a stopover and an open-jaw when using United miles. A stopover can be a stop that is as long as you want and an open-jaw is when you return to a different airport.

You can open-jaw to a different airport than the home airport you flew out of. For example, you could fly from New York to Rome and then return to Houston. It doesn’t matter, it will just price it by the zone you end at. But you can also add your home airport as the stopover. Thus you could fly NYC to Rome, back to New York city and stop for as long as you want. Then on the same ticket fly NYC to Houston.

This is a pretty basic example but it’s a pretty basic concept if you already know what a stopover and open-jaw is.

While writings this intro I put up a pic of my receipt for a ticket to Europe for 57,000 miles and left off the last leg. See normally a roundtrip to Europe is 60,000 miles but I booked it for 57,000. Kurt guessed correctly that I had a one-way to the Caribbean.

The concept is this, that Europe to the Caribbean is priced cheaper than a flight from Europe to the US. When you fly from the US to the Caribbean and back to the Caribbean, like all United tickets, it prices the award based on one-ways. You’re not allowed stopovers on one-ways, but I just mean that United will price the award separately for each direction.

Even if a ticket stops in the US on the way to the Caribbean, it still prices that direction as Europe to the Caribbean, which is 27,000 miles.

So technically you save 3,000 miles and lose your stopover that you could have used in Europe. In general I’d rather have the stopover in Europe but I started thinking of ways to make this more awesome. And what awards could I have bigger savings on using the same concept?

Anyways, I just wanted to run through this first. Any questions about “free” one-ways? Or can I move on to more complicated stopover awards using the same concept?

Now see part two: Using One-ways to Save United Miles