Loyalty glossary · 4. Airline-specific (30)
Open Jaw Award
An open jaw award is a frequent flyer redemption covering two flights that do not form a closed loop: the outward and return journeys start or end at different airports, and the unflown ground segment is the passenger's responsibility.
The mechanics are simple on the map and messy in the tariff. A member flies London to New York, then returns from Boston to London. That is an open jaw award because the two flights share only one city, and the ground segment from New York to Boston is not part of the ticket.
Most programmes do not price an open jaw as a single unit. They price it as two one-way awards, and one-way awards carry a premium over half a return. The member therefore pays extra for the same two flights, without any additional service being provided.
Work the arithmetic to see the size of the premium. A return award on a medium haul route costs 80,000 points. Two one-way awards on the same route cost 50,000 points each, so the open jaw costs 100,000 points, a 20,000 point surcharge or 25 percent more than the return. No extra distance is flown, and no extra segment is added to the ticket.
The surcharge is not a cost recovery. It is a pricing convention inherited from revenue tickets, where one-way fares are often more expensive than return fares for commercial reasons. In an award world where the marginal cost of a seat is the same, the premium is pure rent, and programmes know it.
Some programmes do allow a single open jaw at the return price, usually when the unflown segment is shorter than the flown segments. Others price every open jaw as two one-ways with no exception. That inconsistency proves the premium is a choice, not a law of airline economics, and members should treat the higher quote as a prompt to search other programmes.