US Airways and American Airlines have merged since the publication of this post so it is no longer valid.

US Airways and United are both members of the Star Alliance, so many times you can redeem miles from either carrier for the exact same trip. In those situations, which miles should you use?

I've made a list of some clear situations to favor one mile over the other. The list can also be read as a list of situations to collect US miles versus situations to collect United miles though.

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

When booking an award with AA miles, you cannot select your seats on BA planes until 24 hours before departure. About 21 hours before departure, I logged into BA.com and gave my six digit confirmation code. Almost all the seats had been selected, but I still had some choice.

I checked the seatguru map for the plane I was flying, a 3-class Boeing 777.

Edit: Thanks to the commenters who checked the Membership Rewards site ad found that the ability to transfer between MR and Avios has returned at a 1:1 transfer ratio.

Just now at 10:40 AM Paris time, 4:40 AM ET, and 1:40 AM PT, I logged into Membership Rewards to see if the 50% transfer bonus between Membership Rewards and Avios had really ended.

I have already written a post about the rules of free stopovers on American Airlines awards

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

A few weeks ago, as part of my Anatomy of an Award series, I wrote about booking the award I'm flying right now: Los Angles to Paris with a stopover in Tampa. In this post, I'll talk about my domestic first class trip from LAX to Dallas to Tampa.

I traveled to the airport in my usual way, a limo from the casino.

A small lounge with delicious finger sandwiches and hummus from Jordan.

Check out the similar lists I made for Los Angeles and New York City.

Below is a list of every oneworld alliance flight from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) flown by British Airways, American Airlines, Iberia, Japan Airlines, and Qantas. I have also included non-oneworld partners on which you can book flights with Avios, in this case only Alaska Airlines.

The list is divided into International routes, Hawaii routes, and Domestic routes. Within each group, the routes are listed from most Avios required to fewest.

Because for me, miles are a means to an end: great travel experiences, I may occasionally post non-miles tips on the subject of great travel experiences. Feel free to add your own in the comments, or write a guest post.

I'm a one-bag evangelist. Whether I'm traveling for six weeks in East Africa or a month in Europe, I travel with a single carry-on sized bag.

I've uploaded a companion video to the famous Free Oneways on Delta Awards post.

Check it out, and take a look at the other videos I've uploaded.

This post is part of a series that will detail verbatim my negotiations with credit card companies to squeeze every last point and cent out of my cards.

Last August, I opened both the Citi AAdvantage Visa and Citi AAdvantage Amex at the same time to earn 150,000 American Airlines miles. The Visa had a spending requirement of $1,500 within four months to unlock its 75,000-mile bonus. After hitting that bonus, I moved on to unlocking the Amex's bonus then on to other cards.