I'm busy preparing for the first ever live MileValue.com seminar in Honolulu that starts in 10 hours, so I'll summarize a few interesting nuggets you may have missed.

We all get jealous when we hear that other people have been targeted for better sign up bonuses than the best publicly available credit card offers. Thepointsguy has a way to check whether you've been targeted for any Chase offers lately.

I love Avios. Avios have incredible uses like 4,500 Avios domestic trips within the US on American Airlines flights. Or how about combining an Avios award with an AA award to construct free stopovers outside the US on AA awards or to get almost free oneways to Hawaii.

But, I hate the surcharges that Avios awards entail. Surcharges of hundreds of dollars--in some cases more than $1,000--make Avios worthless to me for transatlantic and transpacific awards.

Luckily they don't charge surcharges on domestic awards on American Airlines.

Recently I spent three nights in Krakow, Poland at two hotels. I'll be reviewing four hotels in Krakow, based on my stays and their location relative to where you want to spend time in the city.

Before I get to that, let me say that I highly recommend a trip to Krakow. First of all, it's in Poland which I found to be inexpensive, full of delicious food, and brimming with attractive people who spoke some English.

Of course, the English is not as strong as in western or northern Europe.

Yesterday, I posted about getting free stopovers on American Airlines awards outside the USA. Hopefully I opened a few eyes, and I certainly caused some confusion. So I'll give a concrete example of getting a free stopover outside the USA on an AA award with screen shots.

This award will go from Los Angeles to Shanghai with a stopover in Tokyo.

There is a trick that can be used to get free stopovers outside the USA on American Airlines awards in certain situations, and I don't just mean 23 hour layovers. Most people probably think that's impossible, since one of the four rules all AA stopovers must comply with is:
1) Stopovers must occur at the North American International Gateway City.

Update: This happened. It was a blast. More may happen.

I recently returned from the Euro Cup on a long routing, most of it in United BusinessFirst.

Kharkiv to Vienna to Frankfut to London to Los Angeles

More than three quarters of the trip was the 5,456-mile flight from Heathrow to LAX. I had the pleasure of flying the 11+ hour flight on a 777 in United BusinessFirst, the unfortunate name of United's international business class product. (The real first class product is called United Global First.)

United's business class on its 777s is arranged in a 2-4-2 pattern.

Singapore Airlines First Class and Business Class space is hard to get with United and US Air miles. Except right now, there is a glitch you can exploit, and the space is widely available.

Or: Did You Earn United Status Without Knowing It?

I have Silver Status on United. See! ---------->

It just posted a few days ago even though my last paid flight with United was in March. What was happening? I had earned Silver Status in March, but United's errors--human and computer--had kept my status from updating to Silver.

There are two requirements to reach United Premier Silver status: accrue 25,000 Premier Miles and fly four United or Copa flights.

Yesterday I talked about how to book awards with layovers of up to 23 hours to see even more cities en route than would be allowable with normal stopover rules. Is it a good idea?

I'll review two recent 23 hour layovers I had, which were actually eight hours in London and thirteen in Frankfurt.

London

In London, I had to fly into Gatwick and out of Heathrow to make sure I could get an en route stopover in Tampa on an AA award.