I got an email from a reader that demonstrates a common point of confusion about stopovers on American Airlines awards.

There is:

widely available
underpriced
economy award space
for two passengers
for all of 2014
to Australia
with the opportunity to stop in Hawaii for a few days in either direction.

If you have 75,000 American Airlines miles and about $100, you can fly a roundtrip award from the United States to Australia on almost any day you want this year.

I nabbed a scarce First Class award from Australia to Los Angeles on Qantas during peak travel season and added a first class segment on American's new Airbus A321T from Los Angeles to New York-JFK, both in fully flat beds.

I'm incredibly excited to try out another First Class product on the Airbus A380, especially after my great experience on a Thai flight from Paris to Bangkok.

Relative to other Anatomy of Award posts, this one was simple to construct and even easier to book online. However, Qantas premium cabin award space isn't widely available.

The offers for the cards listed in this post have expired, so their links have been removed.

With US Airways' official oneworld join date still over two months away (March 30), speculation is rampant over the design of their combined frequent flyer program. What will the new award chart look like, especially in light of United's massive devaluation and Delta's unprecedented double devaluation? Which routing rules will the program establish?

Because everyone loves to wonder, this post is meant to highlight the strengths of each program.

I got something wrong in today's earlier post titled American Airlines Space Bookable with US Airways Miles and US Airways Space Bookable with American Airlines Miles. I corrected the information in that post.

Today marks a huge step forward for the integration of American Airlines and US Airways, which have already legally merged. (See integration time line here.)

Today you can use your American Airlines miles to book awards that include flights on US Airways.

You can also use your US Airways miles to book awards that include flights on American Airlines planes.

Even better: space on both airlines is now showing on both aa.com and usairways.com.

The American Airlines AAdvantage program and US Airways Dividend Miles programs are very different.

2013 was a year of several major devaluation announcements including:

United (kicks in February 1, 2014)
Southwest (kicks in March 31, 2014)
Delta (already kicked in on current award bookings for travel that starts February 1, 2014 or later)
Hyatt (kicks in January 7, 2014)
Ultimate Rewards (with three major transfer partners devaluing--United, Southwest, and Hyatt--the program took a major hit through no fault of its own)

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Qatar Airways has fantastic Business Class award space on its Dreamliner and on its routes from the US to Doha and beyond in 2014.