A generous reader--FlyerTalker ramalama8--has offered to give away two United Club passes or two AAdmirals Club passes to a lucky MileValue reader.

In exchange for that generous offer, I gave him the free gogo inflight internet pass that I was going to give away this week.

If you'd like two United Club passes or two AAdmirals Club passes, comment below.

Last month, I got an interesting email from reader Ed that started:

Scott,

Please consider if this is viable, albeit challenging to book:

[UA]  DCA-BOS-YYZ-ORD-CLE-EWR // EWR-ZRH-IST, IST-IAD

The answer is yes it is possible, and what it means is that you can add a free circle trip onto roundtrip international United awards.

Hopefully readers of this blog are well acquainted with Free Oneways on United Awards, the most-read post I've written.

The central idea of free oneways is to take your free stopover at your home airport, then start a second trip from there on the same award.

Here are some of the day's hot topics being discussed on the FlyerTalk and milepoint message boards.

Christmas Cutbacks from United and How to Deal With Them

The holidays are bringing some unfortunate consequences for people who book award flights on United around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, as seen in this FlyerTalk thread.

In January, I booked an award

United allows one free stopover on roundtrip awards. I've discovered and posted extensively on how this free stopover can be turned into a free oneway. See Free Oneways on United Awards.

A free oneway is a oneway trip to your home airport before your main award or from your home airport after your award. To unlock a free oneway, you need to conserve your United award's free stopover.

Why? Because you need to take that free stopover at your home airport.

I've talked before about the American Express Platinum personal card with its current sign up bonus worth $1,025, a rebate of 102.5% of the minimum spending requirement.  Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

One of the benefits that makes the Mercedes-Benz branded version of this card the current third biggest sign up bonus is that you can get $400 worth of airline fees reimbursed by American Express in your first year of being a cardholder.

That's because the $200 annual airline fee reimbursement is a calendar-year benefit.

For instance, I got my AMEX Platinum

Whenever I get a big, new influx of readers, I try to post a quick Best Of, so they can get a flavor for what MileValue is all about. (I've also started to tag some posts this way. See the right side of the screen -->)

Free Oneways on United Awards

Free Oneways on United Awards is my most viewed post of all time.

Hey there, you're reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.

This is the thirtieth and final post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go.

You did it! You passed Miles Collecting 101.

1. Frugal Travel Guy posted an awesome rundown of the major credit-card issuers' rules on how far apart applications must be and how churnable their bonuses are. I have it bookmarked for my future use.

There are five cardinal rules of American Airlines award tickets that I wanted to put together in one place for reference. All AA awards must comply with these rules and several other minor ones.

You should consult this post when planning an AA award, especially if you are trying to add a stopover or free oneway.

1. Stopovers are not allowed on American Airlines awards.

All connections on purely domestic itineraries must be less than four hours. All connections on international awards must be less than 24 hours.

2.

I am excited to announce that I will be bringing on an intern as soon as possible to work approximately ten hours per week writing for this site. I invite all those interested to apply via email.

The internship will be unpaid and will consist of researching and writing five posts per week that will form a new feature on this blog--sorry, I can't give more information yet. I estimate this time commitment at ten hours per week, but it could be less.

I am looking for a good writer with solid grammar and a facility for explanation.