Update: Link to Etihad Press Release about Route

According to USA Today and Will Horton of Centre for Aviation, Etihad Airways will begin service to Los Angeles from its hub in Abu Dhabi beginning on June 1, 2014. This is fantastic news for those with AAdvantage balances, especially those on the West Coast!

From Etihad's own website. Etihad's Diamond First Class is a fully enclosed suite.

The introduction of Etihad's long nonstop from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi will be a great jumping off point to the Middle East for West Coast flyers.

Qatar Airways awards are now searchable and bookable at ba.com and bookable by calling American Airlines. This is huge news because Qatar has an excellent route network from the US to the Middle East, Indian Subcontinent, and Maldives.

As announced on the oneworld site, Qatar Airways will join the oneworld alliance on October 30th. This is great news for those with large American Airlines AAdvantage or British Airways Avios balances.

American Airlines' website is a great place to search for oneworld award space, especially on oneworld partners such as airberlin, Qantas, and Finnair. American's site is also useful for searching award space on non-oneworld partners like Hawaiian and Alaska. Scott wrote up a good introductory post on AA.com earlier this month.

This brief post will show you a quick tip on how to search for nonstop award segments on AA.com.

How do you manipulate aa.com to show only non-stop results? When would you want to do this?

American's site is intuitive and displays accurate award space.

If you have a stash of Star Alliance frequent flyer miles, United.com is a great place to start planning your award trip, but it's far from perfect.

I've detailed in the past how United's site will display "phantom" availability. Award space displays as bookable, but when you attempt to reserve the space online you will receive an error message. Then if you try to call in to book the trip--whether with United or another Star Alliance partner's miles to book the trip (e.g.

At our Award Booking Service, clients most often ask us to construct specific itineraries with their miles. Maybe they want to go to both France and Italy for their honeymoon and have United miles. We take it from there. Sometimes, however, we receive requests that are more like pleas:

"I have 250,000 Delta Skymiles, how can I put them to any use??"

I've often argued that Skymiles are strategically useful.

I recently had to take a quick trip to Bangladesh. While searching the United site, I found some good space on Thai, EVA, United and Asiana. All the airlines have flat bed seats, but I leaned toward EVA Air because they joined the Star Alliance two months ago, so I hadn't yet had a chance to fly them.

EVA flies the same flat bed business class seats as Cathay Pacific and the new American Air 777-300ER, which are widely considered the best business class seats in the world.

According to this thread on FlyerTalk, British Airways has made some enhancements to their Avios booking functionality on BA.com. I normally cringe when I hear the word "enhancement" associated with a frequent flyer program, but this is actually good news!

Back in December I wrote up British Airways improving their online award search functionality. Once a frustrating experience with multiple unnecessary clicks, BA.com could now display oneworld partner availability immediately and allow you to hop around to different dates on the calendar.

The balance in my US Airways account was practically blinking like a giant Las Vegas neon sign.

120,368!

120,368!

120,368!

As luck would have it, 120,000 miles is the exact amount needed for a roundtrip first class award to North Asia. United charges 140,000 miles for the same award.

Note: This post may have a shorter shelf life due to the impending US Airways merger.

Our Award Booking Service receives numerous requests from clients trying to maximize the value of their miles. These savvy travelers want to fly in the best premium cabins and take advantage of any and all liberal routing rules available.

Luckily, many of our clients have large Dividend Miles balances.

Note: This post may have a shorter shelf life due to the impending US Airways merger.

Our Award Booking Service receives numerous requests from clients trying to maximize the value of their miles. These savvy travelers want to fly in the best premium cabins and take advantage of any and all liberal routing rules available.

Luckily, many of our clients have large Dividend Miles balances.