Yesterday I received an email for an offer that is incredible on the surface: 25,000 American Airlines miles and Hilton Gold Status for five Hilton stays!

How good of a deal is this?

Many of the credit card offers below have expired, so their links have been removed. Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

Yesterday I got an email with the subject line "Earn 3X American Airlines AAdvantage® Miles | Enroll in one click!"

By clicking the button inside the email, I enrolled myself for 3 American Airlines miles per dollar at department stores, restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores through 12/31/13 on purchases made with my Citi AAdvantage card.

I recently booked my friends a roundtrip award to Chile and Argentina, so that they can explore Patagonia next January for only 50,000 American Airlines miles each.

Lake District of Patagonia near Bariloche, Argentina

The award should have cost 60k miles each, but I saved them 20k miles by applying the same trick I used in the post 20k Miles to All of Europe All Summer, and I also added two free oneways onto the award, so that they already have half of their next vacation to Hawaii booked.

Here's a visual representation of

American Airlines has announced a new route from Los Angeles to Sao Paulo starting December 16, 2013.

I recently booked two flights for only $102 total on Asian low-cost carriers. Asian low-cost carriers are so cheap that there are effects on United and American awards you might be considering booking.

I booked Kuala Lumpur to Lankawi for $27 on Air Asia, and I spent another $75 on a Firefly flight from Penang to Phuket.

American Airlines' AAdvantage eShopping mall just sent me the following:

If I spend $35 of more, I get 2,000 bonus AAdvantage miles on top of the normal mileage earning from the mall. Since I value 2,000 bonus AAdvantage miles at $35.40, it's like being rebated my $35 worth of shopping in miles.

Royal Jordanian award space is now searchable on aa.com. You can now search the following airlines' award space on aa.com:

American
Alaska
British Airways
Hawaiian
Qantas
Royal Jordanian
Finnair
airberlin

Because aa.com is very easy to use for searches up to one month at a time and has a pleasant interface, this is great news.

Where does Royal Jordanian fly in the US? How is the award space picture?

Royal Jordanian flies three North American routes.

Detroit-Montreal-Amman
Chicago-Amman
New York-Amman

All of the routes have near-perfect availability in economy and business class.

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.

Update: American Airlines got rid of its RTW awards, so the best way to book RTW awards now is elucidated here.

Key Links:

Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard®
Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express
Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express
Explorer Award chart (eliminated April 2014)
Explorer Awards: The Rules (eliminated April 2014)

Combined, the cards offer enough American Airlines miles for a round-the-world business class award with up to 15 stopovers.

You could take this trip in business

American Airlines has a great promotional award price to Hawaii this fall of only 15,000 miles each way in economy if you book by September 13 and fly September 11 to December 17.

Waikiki, December 2012

American has several services to Hawaii.

Honolulu <-> Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chicago
Kahului <-> Dallas and Los Angeles
Kona <-> Los Angeles
Lihue <-> Los Angeles

How good is this deal? Are there currently better deals to Hawaii?