I've written several posts about Explorer Awards from American Airlines. My favorites are:

American Airlines Explorer Award: The Rules
The Start of My Anatomy of an Award Series on a Real Explorer Award: Planning a RTW Trip
My Post about Getting the AA Miles Needed for a Business Round-the-World Trip

American Airlines Explorer Awards are by far the cheapest option for round-the-world awards and a great option for hopping around one part of the world with many stops.

Explorer Awards are also incredible for combining many trips onto a single award at a huge discount.

According to Bloomberg, AA/US have reached a deal with the Department of Justice, so that the latter will stop objecting to the merger.

I've long maintained that I expected the merger to happen.

I just got this email, advertising up to 15,000 bonus AAdvantage miles when you purchase American Airlines miles before November 15, 2013.

There have been some incredible deals to buy miles in the last few weeks like the US Airways offer to "buy" miles for 1.13 cents each.

How does this deal compare? Is this a good deal for folks trying to amass American Airlines miles?

Update: Link to Etihad Press Release about Route

According to USA Today and Will Horton of Centre for Aviation, Etihad Airways will begin service to Los Angeles from its hub in Abu Dhabi beginning on June 1, 2014. This is fantastic news for those with AAdvantage balances, especially those on the West Coast!

From Etihad's own website. Etihad's Diamond First Class is a fully enclosed suite.

The introduction of Etihad's long nonstop from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi will be a great jumping off point to the Middle East for West Coast flyers.

Qatar Airways awards are now searchable and bookable at ba.com and bookable by calling American Airlines. This is huge news because Qatar has an excellent route network from the US to the Middle East, Indian Subcontinent, and Maldives.

As announced on the oneworld site, Qatar Airways will join the oneworld alliance on October 30th. This is great news for those with large American Airlines AAdvantage or British Airways Avios balances.

Yesterday I received an email for an offer that is incredible on the surface: 25,000 American Airlines miles and Hilton Gold Status for five Hilton stays!

How good of a deal is this?

Many of the credit card offers below have expired, so their links have been removed. Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

Yesterday I got an email with the subject line "Earn 3X American Airlines AAdvantage® Miles | Enroll in one click!"

By clicking the button inside the email, I enrolled myself for 3 American Airlines miles per dollar at department stores, restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores through 12/31/13 on purchases made with my Citi AAdvantage card.

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.