I started this series of posts about booking your trip to Europe for summer 2013 with a post about booking business class. This post will focus on booking an economy class award.

If you want to fly economy class this summer, I recommend getting some American Airlines miles. There are two main reasons:

All the legacy carriers--American, Delta, United, US Airways--charge 60k miles roundtrip to Europe in economy class. But I've outlined a trick that I'll repeat here to get your AA award for 50k miles.

American Airlines business class used to stink.

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I made a YouTube video called How to Add Free Oneways to American Airlines Awards to include in my Los Angeles Frequent Traveler University Presentation.

The video goes through using aa.com to perform award searches, how to use the multi-city booking tool, and other pertinent info for booking these awards online or by phone.

The video is a companion to Master Thread: Free Oneways on American Airlines Awards.

It is included in my slide show about booking free oneways that has been downloaded over 10,000 times.

This is 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. If you have a real award you’d like to write up in a similar post, please contact me, and you can write a guest post.

A few months ago I used 62,500 American Airlines miles and $5 to book a oneway award from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires in American Airlines Flagship First Class. This is one of the simplest awards I've ever booked.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you're spending it like I am with family and friends about to munch on turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pie, and as few veggies as possible. This is absolutely my favorite holiday of the year.

Several years ago when traveling became such a part of my identity, I started saying I was "thankful I live at a time when I can get almost anywhere in the world within a day" at the what-are-you-thankful-for pre-dinner grace.

Using qantas.com for award searches can help you get maximum value from your American Airlines miles. American partners with the oneworld alliance and several non-oneworld partners.

American Airlines eliminated free stopovers in April 2014, killing the possibility of free one ways on American Airlines awards.

A few weeks ago, One Mile at a Time was all over the new American Airlines international routes:

Dallas (DFW) <-> Seoul (ICN)
Dallas (DFW) <-> Lima (LIM)
Chicago (ORD) <-> Dusseldorf (DUS)
New York (JFK) <-> Dublin (DUB)

Those flights went on sale yesterday, meaning that they were added to the award calendars. I decided to take a look at the award-space picture, and I found some surprising results.

In February from Nairobi, Kenya, I booked an American Airlines award 331 days out from Melbourne, Australia to Los Angeles in Qantas business class (with a later free oneway to Tampa.) See my Anatomy of an Award post on that booking.

On that booking, I noticed something odd about the way that American Airlines releases its domestic award space on some routes.

Australia and New Zealand are a tough place to get to with miles, especially if you want to go from mid-December through March, which encompasses Christmas, New Year's, and the Southern Hemisphere's summer.

Having booked several trips to Australia and New Zealand for myself, family, and others through my Award Booking Service, I'll share some tips on getting there with American Airlines miles.

Basics

American Airlines allows oneway bookings at half the price of roundtrip awards.