Last week I saved $65 on a oneway flight from Washington DC to Los Angeles because I had set a price alert on Kayak.com. A few years ago I saved $400 on a trip from Washington DC to Buenos Aires.

Kayak price alerts are an extremely simple tool that everyone should know about to save money on cash tickets for prices you know you need to take. Here's how to set one.

Go to kayak.com and perform your regular flight search.

A few months ago I helped David Code make an award booking. David free lances for the Huffington Post, so he tried to turn the experience into an article that was eventually rejected. Not wanting the article to go to waste, I'll publish it here.

Last Friday's giveaway was a free oneway anywhere Southwest flies. I said I would pick the winner this way:
I want an expensive award to win, but I also want everyone to have a chance, so here’s what I’ve devised.
I will use a random number generator to select three sub-$170 entries to enter round two. I will take all over-$170 entries to round two. I will then use a random number generator to pick a winner from the entries in round two.
I’ll check whether the winner from round two has award space.

Are you spontaneous? Do you live in Charlotte, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Kansas City, Fort Myers, Newark, Tampa, Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta, Columbia, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, San Diego, or Palm Springs?

Reader @bitachu gave me an incredible tip the other day--at trivia night in Honolulu of all places--check out Virgin America's award chart for flights on Hawaiian Airlines.

Basically the chart is incredible and presents huge opportunity for mainlanders and Hawaiians alike whether they want to go to Hawaii or beyond.

Instead of just listing the chart, they have you type in your departure and arrival cities and spit out the number of Elevate points you need to book the award.
Nonetheless, I think I've figured out the underlying chart. Basically, it's a chart-plus-segment mechanism.

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I made a YouTube video called How to Add Free Oneways to American Airlines Awards to include in my Los Angeles Frequent Traveler University Presentation.

The video goes through using aa.com to perform award searches, how to use the multi-city booking tool, and other pertinent info for booking these awards online or by phone.

The video is a companion to Master Thread: Free Oneways on American Airlines Awards.

It is included in my slide show about booking free oneways that has been downloaded over 10,000 times.

I made a YouTube video called How to Add Free Oneways to US Airways Awards to include in my Los Angeles Frequent Traveler University Presentation.

The video goes through using united.com to perform award searches, the exact order of the searches you need to perform, and how to call US Airways to actually book.

The video is a companion to Master Thread: Free Oneways on US Airways Awards.

It is included in my slide show about booking free oneways that has been downloaded over 10,000 times.

The ultimate aspirational award may just be First Class on an Emirates A380 with its onboard shower.

Alaska Airlines has announced a partnership with Emirates, and has promised for most of this year that the award chart for awards booked with Alaska miles on Emirates planes would be coming in late 2012.

We are quite late in 2012, and the award chart has not been released, but the website has been updated to reflect a delay.

This is a bummer, but I'll keep monitoring the situation.

A lot of people read about incredible international business and first class beds, and they want to enjoy those beds on their next trip.

I was looking at some intra-Europe flights for my seven-week loop next summer. I had the brilliant idea that maybe I should oneworld-hub hop.

Munich to Berlin (airberlin)

Berlin to Oslo (airberlin)

Oslo to Helsinki (Finnair)

That would be all new cities for me and all direct flights. I priced out the Avios awards. Berlin to Oslo was 4,500 Avios and $45. That's a bad deal, since the same revenue flights are only $63.