American Airlines eliminated free stopovers in April 2014, killing the possibility of free one ways on American Airlines awards.

Joanne writes:

"I have accumulated approximately 55,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards. I see that I have a Southwest flight credit that is expiring, and Southwest wants me to use 18,000 points to create a reward flight. I have my eye on a roundtrip award to Phoenix that costs 29,000 points. Is it worth it to do this? I am so confused. Any help is appreciated."

I can sympathize with Joanne's confusion.

Introduction to Free One Ways (this post)
Free Oneways on American Airlines Awards (dead as of April 2014)
Free One Ways on United Awards
Free One Ways on Delta Awards
Free One Ways on US Airways Awards
Free One Ways on Alaska Airlines Awards
Three Vacations on Two Awards

A free oneway is a oneway itinerary to or from your home airport added on to another award for no additional miles.

The Delta SkyMiles program has a lot of drawbacks. One of the most annoying is that it charges fuel surcharges on award redemptions on several of its partners. For this post, I've compiled a list of SkyMiles partners that fly to the US, and I've priced out a roundtrip award from the US to their hubs in either economy or business class.

Delta miles can't be used for three-cabin first class redemptions. Awards cost the roundtrip price whether you fly oneway or roundtrip.

I've noted which awards incur surcharges and how much those surcharges are.

I'm excited to announce a new writer has joined the MileValue team: Bill Wilkes.

Bill was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. The son of an American Airlines pilot, he grew up with airplanes being his home away from home. He currently works for the baseball team in Baltimore, MD assisting with Major League rules interpretation and administration. Some of his favorite destinations to travel (with miles, of course) are Spain, Argentina, and Hawaii.

Small Business Saturday from American Express is back. Registration opens November 18.

On November 18, we'll register all our AMEX issued and AMEX processed cards (except prepaids). Then on November 24, we'll spend $25+ at small business with each card to get a $25 credit on each statement.

Last Thanksgiving I was in Hawaii, so I bought $25 gift certificates to all my sister's favorite restaurants. We used some, and I gave her the rest when I left.

United has announced a 20% discount on economy class awards to Europe from January 15 to March 13, 2013:

United and United Express operated flights
Booked between now and November 15
Roundtrip economy class awards for 48k miles.

I'll break this promo down and compare it to the discounted awards to Europe being offered by American and US Airways.

United

Roundtrip awards entirely on planes bearing United and United Express paint jobs between the continental US, Alaska, and Canada and Europe in economy class, flown between 1/15/13 and 3/13/13, and booked between now and 11/15/12 cost 48,000 United miles.

I use three steps to get to my European destination with Delta SkyMiles. For each direction:

Find transatlantic space.
Find domestic space within the US on Delta or Alaska from my home airport to the international gateway.
Find intra-European space to my destination.

Those steps are roughly in order of difficulty--though many times finding domestic space on Delta is impossible at the low-miles price.

A few weeks ago, One Mile at a Time was all over the new American Airlines international routes:

Dallas (DFW) <-> Seoul (ICN)
Dallas (DFW) <-> Lima (LIM)
Chicago (ORD) <-> Dusseldorf (DUS)
New York (JFK) <-> Dublin (DUB)

Those flights went on sale yesterday, meaning that they were added to the award calendars. I decided to take a look at the award-space picture, and I found some surprising results.

Follow @milevalue to see Tahsir's live tweets today on the first day of United Dreamliner operation.