Alaska Air Group Allows One-way Mileage Plan Bookings

Both Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air have announced that they will allow one-way bookings using your Mileage Plan Award Points. You can either book just a one-way ticket or use different levels of awards (like their Saver and Peak) for the same round trip reservation–saving some miles in the process. As of this writing, a one-way Saver Award requires 10,000 miles and a Peak Award goes for 20,000.

As far as I know, this is a fairly unusual policy for any major airline….why don’t they all do it?