This is something lately I’ve gotten a lot of questions about, and if you ask me, I’ll just reply with how nice the trip will be. But if you want my honest opinion – free oneways are a rip off. Especially if you are using US Airways or United for them… In my opinion, you’re getting screwed. Let’s systematically compare maximized routes with stopovers to the real prices of free oneways.
Hmm… Which is considered “maximizing” your miles – This for 110,000 miles?:
Or this for 97,500 miles (with the free one-way):?
So this free oneway I’m talking about is basically what happens when you’re putting together an award ticket that allows a stopover, but you haven’t used your stopover yet. This means you can essentially make your hometown a “stopover” and tack on an extra segment for a later date. For instance instead of ending your ticket in your home town of Chicago, you make that your stopover and continue on to someplace you think you might want to go. It ends up appearing to be the same price.
The route I showed above was alluded to in the end of the United Routing and Stopover Rules post. It was alluded to as a puzzle and I’ve gotten a few responses but all the tools are presented in this blog to book trips like that.
Okay, not everyone can fly that much on one go, but I want to share a few examples how you’re getting hoodwinked if you think that a free oneway is saving you miles. The truth is, it’s costing you miles. Further more, stopovers could be saving you miles.
Also, if it really honestly fits your schedule, your route, your home and your desired destinations… that’s fine. It’s still costing you excess miles but better than not spending them.
Still, I don’t think this is rocket science, it’s a rip off.
1) The free oneway will cost you a oneway
A) Let’s take a route I called the Caribbean Hopper. You could route through anywhere really but a reader Johnny from San Francisco then booked a ticket seeing St. Marteen as stopover, Panama City as a long layover, and then Puerto Rico as a destination. Killer route for 35,000 miles.
B) The free oneway version would be go to St. Marteen as a destination, stopover in your home city, and then add a segment so you return to Puerto Rico. This will also cost 35,000 miles.
Same same?
Hardly. The real cost of route B is 52,500 miles, as you need a oneway back!
So why? Honestly, I don’t understand why you would choose to pay more to do the same route. You could use those miles spent trying to get back home from that “free oneway” to be going somewhere new next time.
True, not everyone has time to do it all at once. But what kind of logic is that? Are you going to spend less time on St. Marteen and Puerto Rico or are you just breaking it up into two trips at an extra costs.
2) Trading the epic for peanuts
Not to be all down on domestic free oneways and the Caribbean… BUT, yea. When comparing adding on a trip to Puerto Rico after Europe, or Bali after Europe… it’s a no brainer.
Now I enjoyed Puerto Rico alright. But compared to Bali, Phuket, Langkawi, etc… it’s peanuts. This is of course opinion, but I feel strongly about it.
I would have to go a little bit looney for you to convince me that paying more miles (in this case 60k+17.5k instead of 65k), to see Puerto Rico instead of Bali, and take up two trips instead of 1, is somehow a better deal.
Now I’m not saying it’s wrong, but this blog is all about maximizing miles and points with stopovers, and in the theme of maximizing miles and points to see more with less, I’m going to have to dub that route a less awesome idea.
3) Forfeit the chance to save miles
If you haven’t read United’s Stopover and Routing Rules and The Secrets of Award Pricing Engines- The Most Powerful Zones this won’t make much sense. But let me say that routing through certain regions will lower the cost of miles.
In the posts above I showed how stopovers can systematically save miles. Those who thoroughly understand the routing rules of the airlines will benefit. The posts show the following:
- Africa for 65,000 miles instead of 80,000
- The Middle East for 65,000 miles instead of 80,000 miles
- Australia for 70,000 miles instead of 80,000 miles
Plus there are ways to get more than 1 stopover out of UA and USA but we haven’t explicitly talked about that yet.
What would tacking on a free oneway cost? Well, essentially you forfit the ability to combine with a zone that lowers the price and you add the price of a oneway return. So a free oneway to central america would cost:
- Africa for 97,5000 instead of 65,000 miles
- The Middle East for 97,500 miles instead of 65,000 miles
- Australia for 97,500 miles instead of 70,000 miles
And again, I’d rather see Bali or Fiji…
4) Is your hometown a hub?
So I’m not saying there are never cases where a free oneway is the best option, I’m saying it’s never so with UA or USA and it’s just dang hard with AA.
Here I am planning to use AA miles to get to Texas from Europe and due to me not having time between the end of my Europe time with my mom, and my sister’s wedding, I can’t do a stopover in Cancun or something. Again, Cancun isn’t Bali but I love Mexico. Hopping over to Isla Mujeres would be a nice extra to my 20,000 mile ticket.
However, I can’t. But I am meeting friends in Puerto Vallarta after the wedding. This is a good opportunity for a free oneway, right?
Wrong because I don’t live in a hub. AA only allows stopovers in the North American Gateway City and most of America doesn’t live in Chicago, New York or Miami.
I want to fly into Houston, and the only way to do that would be BA and they have massive fuel surcharges. So I can fly to Dallas and then buy a ticket.
So now what would my ticket look like?
It would look like me flying into Dallas and buying a separate ticket to Houston. Then a few weeks later I would have to buy a ticket from Houston to Dallas separately to catch my “free oneway” from Dallas.
The cheapest ticket is about $150 roundtrip and there are two of us. I would be paying $300 to catch a “free” oneway and then I would need to pay for a ticket back.
If I lived in Dallas, this would be perfect, but I don’t.
Conclusion
If you like paying more to see less, I highly recommend tacking on a free oneway.
And in all honesty, it’s easier. It’s easier than learning the complex Routing and Stopover Rules of United. It’s easier than booking trips like the Caribbean Hopper and the Pacific Hopper. But it’s not maximizing your miles the way you could.
And you don’t have to maximize your miles. Booking a roundtrip ticket to see a dream destination is a good enough feeling that you don’t have to add a segment to Fiji to enjoy the trip.
This is just to encourage thinking about miles in getting more stops. Then think about lowering the price. Not the apparent price but the real price, start to end. Finally, there are other ways to transfer your miles than SPG to AA and Amex to BA.
If you want to dig more check out these two categories:
Hopefully somewhere you can find some great redemption routes that are far better than tacking on a free oneway. To each his own, different strokes for different folks… But the redemptions can be incredibly generous. That’s why I posted the picture at the top.
What’s your opinion on whether or not free oneways are a waste of stopovers and miles? Am I being too harsh?
Obviously I value things differently from you, but on most of my vacations, I only have a week to spare and more than week’s worth of things I want to do in my primary destination anyway so a stopover/RTW world trip is worthless to me since I simply don’t have time to take advantage of it. On the other hand, a free one-way saves me half the cost of my next vacation, which I would have taken anyway.
I think you’ve stated this very well. It’s a time issue.
As I asked Dave, I’m curious why one wouldn’t take off both weeks in one vacation and do both at once and save the miles? I honestly don’t really understand vacation things as I haven’t really been in the corporate world more than 6 months ever…
Do you mind breaking down the redemptions for that particular 110k? Hard to see the 8 stops
I will in the future. It may make more sense if the context of the post it was originally in though.
I think you made a qualifying comment when you mentioned available time. If I only have time to go from A to B and back on a given trip, then adding a one-way to C later can be a good idea. The other situation would be when there’s a dirt cheap fare between two overseas destinations I’m wanting to visit, so that it could make sense to save the stopover and use it for a one-way later. When feasible, I too would rather add a stopover for the purposes you describe during the course of an overseas trip.
You seem to understand the other side better than me Dave :-p
Explain this to me… because I’ve heard it when making my case before: why is it that normal people say well “I only have one week for this vacation… and then one week for the next vacation. So I do this trip in the spring and the free oneway in the fall.” Okay, why not just take off two weeks now, do both and save the miles? Do vacations just not work like this in the corporate world or something?
Re: two weeks in a row off work…
I choose not to to do it because usually if I leave work for a week they can manage without me. If I leave for two weeks in a row, it requires checking in with the office while I’m traveling, responding to emails, and often completing assignments that simply cannot wait a full two weeks while I’m away. I’d prefer to be “fully away” for half as long (and twice as often) than have to work while traveling. Not every office is the same.
So what you’re telling me is, normal people value their jobs? :-p
But it sounds like it might depend on your job and your role in the company. The “I’d prefer to be “fully away” for half as long (and twice as often)” part makes a lot of sense. No one wants to be sitting in the room working on their two week vacation. I wonder if that sums it up for most people.
Thanks for your reply!
And then you have self-employed folks who need to be there for their clients in less than two weeks, couples who are unable to get the same two weeks off, school schedules, and travelers who (unlike you and I) like to go to one place and “do” that one area rather than using award tickets for what amounts to global road trips.
Man, normal life sounds kinda rough. 😀
Actually, I personally usually will take my stopover overseas when redeeming one of these awards. In principle, and usually in practice, I’m with you! I try to schedule a longer trip if at all possible. I just raised the time issue as a reply to your closing question. It’s why in some circumstances people would find the one-way advantageous.
I think the free one ways work best when living at a hub and using AA. One of the main reasons is AA considers carribean also a part of north america. For example one can go from aruba to europe with a stopover in NYC for 20K miles (offpeak travel).
There are ways to maximize miles even with free one ways.
I agree, AA to US and Mexico (which is what I want to do) for 20k is a killer deal. Too bad I can’t do it from Houston.
You make a great case – for college students and single people with extremely flexible schedules.
As for me, I was happy to get a planned return trip from SEA to SAN tacked on to a SAN-NRT trip scheduled the following month and save the British Airways miles it otherwise would have cost.
Working people often don’t have the flexibility to take off more than a week at a time, and sometimes not even that. Families can have a very difficult time traveling a complex itinerary with a small child. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but frankly, some of the stopover and layover maps I’ve seen sound like my personal idea of hell if I were trying to travel with my family – and I only have one child who is well beyond the diaper stage.
Your perspective just comes across as very limited. I can see the fun and challenge in eking out the maximum possible value from every mile and point, but if it doesn’t work for a person’s specific situation, it doesn’t mean that they are stupid for not taking advantage of it, as the tone of your article implies. It means they are smart to recognize their own needs and the needs of their families, and make the best possible use of their miles for their situation.
Also, British Airways doesn’t charge fuel surcharges on domestic one-way redemptions.
Ultimately it comes down to different strokes for different folks, eh?
I’m well aware that BA doesn’t charge YQ on domestic legs, the mention of YQ on BA was for flying BA LHR-IAH which would be really expensive for two people. It’s the only way I can get a stopover in IAH… and again, yq would be massive.
But for the record, I’m neither single nor in college. :-p Although we do have extremely flexible schedules.
This is a great point that is woefully underaddressed as people talk about “maximizing” their free one-way. I’d rather have the stopover in say, Europe, in route to Asia than a free segment within the US.
Agreed. I’d rather take two weeks now to do it, and I’d rather not be committed to a second ticket.
Free one-way is still unbeatable here is an example when you book free one-ways and stopovers.
TICKET1-OUT : ORD-HKG
TICKET1-IN: PEK-ORD
FREE1WAY: ORD-CUZ
TICKET2-OUT: CUZ-ORD
STOP: ORD-BUD
TICKET2-IN: BUD-ORD
I have to ask, what award chart allows Asia to South America for the same price as North America? Same for Europe. You’ll end up paying a premium…
This is indeed possible with United for 150k in econ. Yet, ORD-HKG-BUD-ORD and then ORD-CUZ-ORD would cost you 105k. Plus you would have a second stopover available.
So you are essentially paying 45k more, to have 1 less stopover.
IMO, the free-way is beatable in price and stops, plus you wouldn’t be committed as far in advance.
I disagree with you in one respect because free one-ways have some value when a person only wants to visit one destination at a time.
However, they’ve never been very valuable for me. I don’t like planning more than one trip in advance. I don’t like booking 50/50 awards with the outbound now and figuring out the return later. I prefer to use cash for domestic trips and get miles/status/upgrades. And if I’m going to cross an ocean, I’d like to be able to hop around and visit multiple destinations, which is easier if you use your stopover at the destination rather than the origin. So I’m with you on this topic.
Sure. That’s what Becky essentially said, that she has one week at a time. So I wouldn’t want to fly more and split up my bali time or whatever in the name of maximizing.
However, this second part is huge for me! You make a great point, I almost want to edit my post.
I am a deals chaser. With free one-ways you are booking sooo far in advanced to “maximize” that you may miss great deals. We have booked multiple mistake fares coming up. We’re spending $20 a week to $20 a night to stay at resorts like the Sheraton. So yea, I could go on and on, but I think a little bit of flexibility goes a long way in this game.
In About Me, you say to feel free to contact you. Is there any way to do that not involving a public posting? 😉
Please email me at the address on this comment.
Thanks.
Dave
I have the same question as BikeGuy….how do I contact you?
Twitter is the best way. @travelisfree
BTW, I sent you an email and it bounced back. :-/
How do you go about getting more than 1 stopover on an award?
The price discrepancies I’ve talked about in the more advanced routing rules/secrets post in combination can make it so it’s cheaper to fly somewhere else (like Hawaii) before starting your trip. This is oneway that I’ll probably share soon.
About 2 weeks vacation at a time:
vacation for me is to get away from work, relax and rejuvenate. I personally would like to take multiple small vacations instead of one big vacation.
I like to relax in Bali one week, and then relax in Phuket the next. :-p But I see your point. Some people don’t like the hussle of it, after all it’s vacation.
Looking to book an award ticket on United, but can’t get the routing down. Routes: HKG=>HAN, SGN=>NAN=>HKG. Doesn’t see to work, what am I missing here? I thought I had the stopover (NAN) and the openjaw (HAN/SGN). Also, is this a good use of miles?