Anatomy of an Award: Using AA Miles to Fly Qantas Business Class

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.

Free Oneways on United Awards with a Foreign Origin

I've written extensively about getting Free Oneways on United Awards. Yesterday I got an email from a foreign reader, asking whether he could get a free oneway on his United awards. Seeing no theoretical reason why not, I looked into it and found you can get free oneways on roundtrip United awards regardless of their origin.

I thought I'd share this because even for US-based flyers, this discovery can have value.

Free Oneways on Delta Awards: The Video

I've uploaded a companion video to the famous Free Oneways on Delta Awards post.

Check it out, and take a look at the other videos I've uploaded.

Free Oneways on United Awards: The Video

As a companion to the mega-popular Free Oneways on United Awards, I've made this video of me booking such an award.

Free Oneways on US Airways Awards?

US Airways and American Airlines have merged since the publication of this post so it is no longer valid.

The punctuation in this post's title is different than in previous posts on the subject of tacking free oneways onto awards. In the last week, I've shown how to add free oneways to your United, Delta, and American awards.

Clarifications to Free Oneways on Delta Awards

Today's post on tacking free oneways onto your roundtrip Delta awards generated a lot of interest, but I need to clarify a few things that spawned some confusion. If you haven't read that post, though, do so first. It's right below this post.

1. The distance between the open jaw cities needs to be less than than the distance of a oneway between your home airport and the roundtrip award's destination. Let me explain with examples.

The open jaw cities when you're adding a free oneway are the very first city in your itinerary and the very last.

Free Oneways on Delta Awards

After my popular posts about booking free oneways on United and American, this installment will focus on tacking free oneways onto Delta awards. This article presumes a knowledge of how to book free stopovers on Delta.com, which I covered here.

If you'll recall from those posts, we need two things to book any free oneway: a stopover and an open jaw. Luckily on its awards, Delta offers both a stopover and an open jaw.

Anatomy of an Award: American Airlines. Using AA Miles to Fly Hawaiian Airlines to Australia Plus a Free Oneway

This is the another post in my Anatomy of an Award series, in which I take a real award I've booked and break it down step-by-step to elucidate the award booking process.

Free Oneways are Available on United Awards to Hawaii

Thanks to reader Mulbry, who found some roundtrips to Hawaii incorporating stopovers. I hope everyone is thinking what I thought. Where there are stopovers and open jaws, free oneways can be constructed.

I immediately set about about to find free oneways the same I described on Friday.

And I confirmed my hunch.

Two Reader Questions About Free Oneways on United

#1 Ralph writes in to ask whether he should cancel his previously booked United award to take advantage of a 2,500 mile oneway to Hawaii:

Just wanted to say what an awesome post on United Award flights and the ability to add flights from the East Coast to HNL for only 2,500 miles! I personally think that is one of the best examples you've highlighted.

I wish I saw this about two weeks ago when I booked a JFK-LIS, stopover, LIS-MAD, openjaw, BCN-JFK award flight.