You all know what Uber is. It introduced and popularized the concept of an online ridesharing service to the world. If you haven't heard of Lyft yet, it is also an online ridesharing service, accessed via mobile app, that has emerged as the second strongest contender in the game. At their cores the two ridesharing services are very similar products. Both were founded in San Francisco, and both applications connect people via a mobile online application in need of a ride to (certified) drivers willing to give it to them.

Let’s talk about transferring Ultimate Rewards to airline partners for redeeming on domestic awards. This is part one in a series that will allow you to master redeeming awards within the United States, no matter what kind of points or miles you might have.

For those of you that have already read the first post in this series, you will notice repeat information at points in this post (as well as the rest of them to follow) because some of the airline partners overlap between transferrable points programs. 
“How to Maximize Domestic

The brand new PointBreaks list allows us to book hotel rooms through October 31, 2016 for $30 per night.

Even if you’ve read other posts on the PointBreaks list, read this.

Travel from San Francisco, San Jose, and New York City to  Seoul, Hong Kong, and Tokyo for $399 in Air China economy.

Aeroplan is Air Canada’s spun-off loyalty program. Aeroplan.com is an awesome search engine that displays award availability on almost all Star Alliance flights.

You should know how to use aeroplan.com whether or not you ever plan to redeem Aeroplan miles because you shouldn’t necessarily search the website of the miles you’re using. You should just search the website that is easiest and best at displaying award availability. Any award availability shown at aeroplan.com will be bookable with Aeroplan, United, Singapore, ANA, Lufthansa, and Avianca miles.

Aeroplan.com is usually my backup search engine.

This post is part of a series about how to maximize value when transferring your Citi ThankYou Points to airline partners.

Sweetspots with Singapore KrisFlyer Miles #1: Suites Class for as Little as 32,000 Miles
Sweetspots with Singapore KrisFlyer Miles #2: Awards on United and Partner Flights
Sweetspots with Virgin Atlantic Miles #1: 10,000 Points USA to Europe
Sweetspots with Virgin Atlantic Miles #2: Sweetspots on 12 Partner Award Charts
Sweetspots with Virgin America Points: 35,000 Points Roundtrip to Europe in Flat Bed
Sweetspots with Flying Blue Miles: 30,000 Miles Roundtrip to Hawaii (this post)
Sweetspots

I use united.com for most of my award searches when redeeming Star Alliance miles because it shows most Star Alliance partners' award availability, but it does have some drawbacks. Namely, it doesn't show all partners and it sometimes displays phantom award space--award space will show as available but in reality, it doesn't exist.

Star Alliance Airlines Whose Award Space I Want to Search

The best way to confirm Star Alliance award space is using the All Nippon Airways (ANA) search tool. ANA's tool is trickier to use, but it's the most reliable.

Retention bonuses are not automatically offered by the Citi AAdvantage cards, but are still possible to get if you call and speak with a Citi representative. All it takes is a little of knowledge of what they want (or don't want) to hear.

I think miles and points are one area where you don't have to spend hours per day to get great results like flying some of the world's nicest First Class products or taking your family of four on vacation for pennies on the dollar.

Easy enough to get here

You could probably cut the amount of time you spend on this hobby to 20% of your current input and still get 80% of the results.

Aspire to Cathay Pacific Business Class.

It is one of the world's nicest Business Classes, featuring a fully flat bed on flights of up to 16 hours between the United States and Hong Kong.
It is dirt cheap at 55,000 American Airlines miles one way or 110,000 US Airways miles roundtrip. This is just 10% more than flying half the time in a far inferior product to Europe.
Award space is widely available.