I recently booked my friends a roundtrip award to Chile and Argentina, so that they can explore Patagonia next January for only 50,000 American Airlines miles each.

Lake District of Patagonia near Bariloche, Argentina

The award should have cost 60k miles each, but I saved them 20k miles by applying the same trick I used in the post 20k Miles to All of Europe All Summer, and I also added two free oneways onto the award, so that they already have half of their next vacation to Hawaii booked.

Here's a visual representation of

American Airlines has announced a new route from Los Angeles to Sao Paulo starting December 16, 2013.

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 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.

Waikiki, December 2012

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.

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

Update at 12:45 PM ET: 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

Some credit card offers in this post have expired, but they might come back. If they do they will appear --> Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

You can increase the value of all your miles by using them for their highest-value uses. You can get more out of this hobby by collecting the right miles for your goal trip.

The first truism is why I started the MileValue Award Booking Service. The second is why I offer Free Credit Card Consultations.

American Airlines has released award space in first class on its three-cabin 777 from Los Angeles to Miami on 18 days in April 2014 including the last 11 days.

I recently saved a MileValue Award Booking Service client 60,000 miles on a trip to Israel by taking advantage of the best use of American Airlines miles and British Airways Avios on the same trip.

A client contacted me looking for a trip for two from Atlanta to Israel next spring. She had some Delta miles, American miles, and Avios.