A version of this post appeared today at hackmytrip.com. Thanks to that Scott for the opportunity to make a guest post. I invite my readers to check his stuff out.

Regular readers know that there are four rules to getting a free stopover on AA awards. The first one is:
1) Stopovers must occur at the North American International Gateway City. The North American International Gateway City is the last city in North America you fly out of on awards to other regions from North America. On awards from other regions to North America, the North American International Gateway City is the North American city in which you first arrive.

My brother and I had a trip to the Australian Open in mind and a cache of AA miles from the Citi card sign up bonanza. I had my flight to Australia booked (United Global First), but I knew the return would be tricky to book on my preferred flight, the direct Melbourne to Los Angeles flight on a Qantas A380.

Part of the problem was that January is peak travel time to and from Australia.

In my trip report of BA business from Tampa to London, I mentioned offhandedly that a lot of people could find value in AA awards with a stopover in the Caribbean on the way to Europe even after paying the $300 fuel surcharge for flying British Airways on an AA award.

Astute reader Francisco C pointed out that although one example I gave--LAX to Cancun, stopover, Cancun to London (and beyond)--was pricing as a free stopover on aa.com, the Caribbean stopover options I had claimed were possible were not booking as free stopovers.

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

When booking an award with AA miles, you cannot select your seats on BA planes until 24 hours before departure. About 21 hours before departure, I logged into BA.com and gave my six digit confirmation code. Almost all the seats had been selected, but I still had some choice.

I checked the seatguru map for the plane I was flying, a 3-class Boeing 777.

I have already written a post about the rules of free stopovers on American Airlines awards

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

A few weeks ago, as part of my Anatomy of an Award series, I wrote about booking the award I'm flying right now: Los Angles to Paris with a stopover in Tampa. In this post, I'll talk about my domestic first class trip from LAX to Dallas to Tampa.

I traveled to the airport in my usual way, a limo from the casino.

This post is part of a series that will detail verbatim my negotiations with credit card companies to squeeze every last point and cent out of my cards.

Last August, I opened both the Citi AAdvantage Visa and Citi AAdvantage Amex at the same time to earn 150,000 American Airlines miles. The Visa had a spending requirement of $1,500 within four months to unlock its 75,000-mile bonus. After hitting that bonus, I moved on to unlocking the Amex's bonus then on to other cards.

There are five basic types of frequent flier miles. I'll detail each, including how best to take advantage of them. Then I'll explain why it's important to diversify across the types (not just across frequent flier programs.)

1) Region-to-region based miles. American, Delta, United, US Airways, etc

Region-to-region miles are the most common type of miles. These miles can be redeemed according to award charts, so a flight from North America to Europe costs a certain amount of miles regardless of where in North America and where in Europe and regardless of the (valid) routing.

Introduction to Free One Ways (this post)
Master Thread: Free Oneways on American Airlines Awards (dead as of April 2014)
Master Thread: Free One Ways on United Awards
Master Thread: Free One Ways on Delta Awards
Master Thread: Free One Ways on US Airways Awards
Three Vacations on Two Awards

Did the title grab your attention? I'm actually underselling and overdelivering, since I'm going to show you how to get 3.5 vacations on two awards!

These free oneways that I've been writing about on United, Delta, and American are incredibly powerful.