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.

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.

#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.

Miles collectors are used to adding free oneways to American awards, but may not have learned about tacking a free oneway onto a United award until yesterday. Because of the newness, there is some confusion that I want to clear up by comparing the two types of free oneways. But if you haven't read either of those linked posts, please do so now. For this post, I'll use my normal notation to indicate a stopover (//). Here are the differences between the two:

1.

Yesterday, I wrote about how to book free stopovers online on your United awards. While researching for that post, I made a typo that caused me to discover a loophole that allows us to get free oneway flights on United awards in much the same way we can get free oneways on American Airlines awards! This discovery completely changes the way I'll be booking United awards from now on.

Getting these free oneways requires taking advantage of United's booking rules that allow one stopover and two open jaws for international awards from the US.

Yesterday, I talked about how to book a stopover on an American Airlines award online. Booking an award with a stopover online saves time and money, so today I want to explain how to book a stopover on a United award online.

The main limitation when trying to book an award with a stopover online is that you can only book awards online when the airline whose miles you're using loads the availability of the partner whose planes you want to fly.

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the United Mileage Plus program. In Part 2, we looked at the chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we valued specific Mileage Plus awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one Mileage Plus mile.

In this post, I’ll explain why I value one United Mileage Plus mile at 1.81 cents, but your value will be different. To start I’ll go back to the values for the redemptions I found in Part 3.

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the United Mileage Plus program. In Part 2, we looked at the chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific Mileage Plus awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one Mileage Plus mile.

Now that we've looked at the rules of the Mileage Plus program, and we've looked at the chart to find some valuable awards, we're going to value specific awards.

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the United Mileage Plus program. In Part 2, we’ll look at the chart to and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific Mileage Plus awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one Mileage Plus mile.

In this post, I'll detail what I think are some of the best Mileage Plus awards from North America.

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we will look at the mechanics of the United Mileage Plus program. In Part 2, we'll look at the chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific Mileage Plus awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one Mileage Plus mile.

United miles have a reputation among mileage collectors for being the most valuable mileage currency around.