United has confirmed the introduction of one-way awards starting Monday. Here’s some more detail:
With Mileage Plus’ One-Way Awards, you can travel one-way for half the miles of a roundtrip award (starting at 12,500 miles for a domestic Saver award) on United or United Express. …
Our work continues. Initially, One-Way Awards and Miles & Money Awards will only be available online. You will be able to call Reservations to book these awards later this year. The ability to mix and match award levels – Saver or Standard Awards – for a roundtrip award ticket will be available in the summer. I realize that you can mix and match awards now (or shall I say starting on Monday) by creating multiple PNRs. That will change and you will be able to do this on one PNR in the near future.
Apparently one-way awards will be on United metal only, no partners. No word yet whether it will be possible to do a stopover on a one-way award (essentially creating two stopovers per roundtrip), whether they might follow American’s lead in eliminating stopovers altogether, or whether stopovers will be limited to roundtrip awards.
United is also introducing “Miles and Money” awards with more details available on Monday. I do not expect this to be a good value, but hope to be proven otherwise.
What is a PNR? Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Name_Record
AA still allows stopovers on international flights, at the international gateway only (limited to the US gateway only at flights to/from the US). I am flying LHR-JFK-DCA and LGA-BOS-LHR with stopovers in both JFK outbound and BOS inbound for 40k miles total (and a $1 bus trip from Bethesda, MD to NYC to fill the open jaw).