Yesterday, I posted about getting free stopovers on American Airlines awards outside the USA. Hopefully I opened a few eyes, and I certainly caused some confusion. So I'll give a concrete example of getting a free stopover outside the USA on an AA award with screen shots.

This award will go from Los Angeles to Shanghai with a stopover in Tokyo.

There is a trick that can be used to get free stopovers outside the USA on American Airlines awards in certain situations, and I don't just mean 23 hour layovers. Most people probably think that's impossible, since one of the four rules all AA stopovers must comply with is:
1) Stopovers must occur at the North American International Gateway City.

Update: This happened. It was a blast. More may happen.

I recently returned from the Euro Cup on a long routing, most of it in United BusinessFirst.

Kharkiv to Vienna to Frankfut to London to Los Angeles

More than three quarters of the trip was the 5,456-mile flight from Heathrow to LAX. I had the pleasure of flying the 11+ hour flight on a 777 in United BusinessFirst, the unfortunate name of United's international business class product. (The real first class product is called United Global First.)

United's business class on its 777s is arranged in a 2-4-2 pattern.

Singapore Airlines First Class and Business Class space is hard to get with United and US Air miles. Except right now, there is a glitch you can exploit, and the space is widely available.

Or: Did You Earn United Status Without Knowing It?

I have Silver Status on United. See! ---------->

It just posted a few days ago even though my last paid flight with United was in March. What was happening? I had earned Silver Status in March, but United's errors--human and computer--had kept my status from updating to Silver.

There are two requirements to reach United Premier Silver status: accrue 25,000 Premier Miles and fly four United or Copa flights.

Yesterday I talked about how to book awards with layovers of up to 23 hours to see even more cities en route than would be allowable with normal stopover rules. Is it a good idea?

I'll review two recent 23 hour layovers I had, which were actually eight hours in London and thirteen in Frankfurt.

London

In London, I had to fly into Gatwick and out of Heathrow to make sure I could get an en route stopover in Tampa on an AA award.

Recently I had two clients of my Award Booking Service want to add a few 23 hour layovers onto their United award from Cleveland to South Africa. All the legacy US carriers have a rule in place that on international layovers, under 24 hours is just a layover, but over 24 hours is a stopover.

This distinction is crucial since no US carrier allows more than one en route stopover internationally.

Prologue

10 Through 8 and Honorable Mentions

7 and 6

5. Spend the Night on a Man Made Island in Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navigable lake, straddling the border of Peru and Bolivia. It's a huge, beautiful, blue placid surface dotted with tiny islands that have been inhabited for centuries.

Lake Titicaca is at an even higher elevation than Cuzco, so take adequate precautions.

Lake Titicaca is ringed by incredibly unimpressive towns--Juliaca and Puno, Peru and Copacabana, Bolivia.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about US Airways secretly loading their off peak award space to South America. Check out that post for a full rundown of US Airways off peak awards, probably the best value out there for award travel.