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.

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?

Fuel dumping, at least among people searching for a deal, is the practice of purchasing a ticket in such a way that fuel surcharges are not added. Paid tickets have three components: base fare, government taxes, and fuel surcharges.

On some tickets, the majority of the price is made up of fuel surcharges, so dumping them from the price makes the ticket far cheaper.

Here's page 712 of the FlyerTalk thread on the topic if you want to know more.

Two days ago, American Airlines added fuel surcharges to Malaysia Airlines awards.

British Airways' two daily flights between New York-JFK and London-City on all-business-class A318s have incredible award space next June.

It's a route and plane that fascinates me, and one way for 40k Avios + $438 seems like an OK deal for a fantastic product, level of service, and the opportunity to arrive at London-City instead of Heathrow or Gatwick.

What's different about the flight? What is the award space picture? Is it worth the fuel surcharges?

The Flight

British Airways operates two daily flights between New York-JFK and London-City.

The Points Guys says he has an official statement from the American Airlines PR department:

"Last night, in a routine effort to better align American to industry standards with other global carriers, American began collecting carrier-imposed surcharges on tickets for travel on other carrier’s metal.  This change was intended for revenue tickets only, but the surcharge was erroneously added to AAdvantage award redemptions on other airlines as well.  Except in the cases of British Airways and Iberia (where American currently collects these surcharges), no carrier-imposed surcharges will be applied when redeeming AAdvantage miles for award travel on other carriers.  Any