Unlike United, Continental doesn’t allow one way award tickets, which is a huge frustration to many. However, The Points Guy outlines a way to kind of book a one way award. Basically, Continental doesn’t actually require you to book a roundtrip award, but rather an award that includes at least two pricing units. In other words, Continental does split up the cost of the award when you search on their online tool (for example, if you search for a coach award from the US to Europe, you’ll see each direction prices at 27,500 miles), though you need two pricing sectors in order to be able to book it.

So what that essentially means is that you could book an award from New York to Frankfurt for 27,500 miles, and then from Frankfurt to Rome for another 12,500 miles, for a total of 40,000 miles. It’s much cheaper than paying 55,000 miles and “throwing away” the return. Actually, you can make two useful one way tickets out of a Continental award. For example, you could book a one way ticket from New York to Frankfurt, and if you have a need for an award from New York to San Francisco later in the year, you could include that on the award as well. In coach it would still only cost you 40,000 miles (27,500 miles for the transatlantic segment, and 12,500 miles for the domestic segment).

I’m sure they’ll eventually allow “real” one way awards, but in the meantime this is a decent workaround if you only have Continental miles and need a one way ticket.

Posted on January 27th, 2011 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Continental | 11 Comments »

  1. January 27th, 2011 at 1:12 pm

    Adrian said,

    At least one can book CO one-way awards using UA miles, though!

  2. January 27th, 2011 at 2:21 pm

    Al said,

    is this for flights on Continental metal or does this apply for partner award redemptions using Continental miles?

  3. January 27th, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    mark said,

    Interesting. Just a week ago, I tried to book something similar to the above on co.com. I was attempting ORD-EWR and then a month later EWR-CUN. co.com bombed out with an error message and I assumed it was because I was mixing domestic and international. But, your last example above was Europe and domestic, so maybe co.com errored out for another reason. Hmm…

  4. January 27th, 2011 at 3:14 pm

    sjs said,

    Don’t think your last example works. Remember the rule about open jaw being the shortest leg.

  5. January 27th, 2011 at 6:56 pm

    Gary said,

    “I’m sure they’ll eventually allow “real” one way awards” I assume they WON’T allow real one-way awards. They’ll just become Mileage Plus.

    In fact I assume the reason they haven’t invested in one-way awards is precisely because the program isn’t long for this world.

  6. January 27th, 2011 at 10:18 pm

    Gary said,

    CO has never been great on the reward side in my experience. I really wonder how much of their program will remain in the new CO/UA program…

  7. January 27th, 2011 at 11:39 pm

    4Health said,

    You could also use the intra-columbia award for 8,500 miles, but the problem with that will be that it is a really short segment.

  8. January 28th, 2011 at 6:29 am

    Gary said,

    Wow — comments from two DIFFERENT Garys, right in a row!

  9. January 28th, 2011 at 11:04 am

    The Points Guy said,

    SJS- Continental has the open jaw rule but does not enforce it in reality. Their engine just simply prices two portions- I have booked these online and over the phone. It may take some work, but it is doable.

  10. January 29th, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    US AIr said,

    Us Air still doesn’t have one-waya wards either.

  11. February 16th, 2011 at 10:25 am

    Sanjay said,

    using this strategy would i be able to do

    SNA – ORD for one leg
    and LAX – DXB – BOM for the second leg of the “roundtrip” (using emirates for this leg).

    12. Add A Comment

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