The legacy carriers--United, US Airways, Delta, American--all charge a fee if you ticket your award by phone instead of online. Here's your guide to avoiding those phone fees:

United

United charges $25 per passenger if you book by phone. They will not waive this phone fee just because a booking could not be completed online. That's frustrating because many multi-city and free-oneway awards can't be booked online. They generate error messages despite being within the routing rules.

Here's how you avoid the phone fee with United:

First, search for and reserve any United flight.

Delta only allows you to hold an itinerary if you don't have enough miles in the account to ticket at that moment. (If you sweet talk the right agent, you might get a hold even if you have enough miles, but it's not easy.)

Here's a trick to avoid this annoying policy if you have enough miles in your account to ticket the award you want.

Call Delta at 800-323-2323.
Instead of giving the SkyMiles account number you'll be using, give the account number of a friend that has very few miles.

Here are some of the day's hot topics being discussed on the FlyerTalk and milepoint message boards.

Christmas Cutbacks from United and How to Deal With Them

The holidays are bringing some unfortunate consequences for people who book award flights on United around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, as seen in this FlyerTalk thread.

In January, I booked an award

Hey there, you're reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.

This is the twenty-sixth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go.

Yesterday, I talked about using delta.com for award searches.

Hey there, you're reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.

This is the twenty-sixth post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete.

Samir asks:
Hi Scott,
     I discovered your blog recently and am loving it. Your miles-related knowledge is pretty impressive and I most definitely appreciate the tips/advice I have gotten from your site so far. Needless to say, I have started reading your site daily. 
     Anyway, I have an issue that I was hoping you could help me out with. Last summer, I signed up for the AMEX Premier Rewards Gold card when it had a nice signup bonus at the time.

I'm rebooting the Free First Class Next Month series. It will basically be the same content as before, but the posts will be enhanced, updated, and reordered to improve them. See directly below this post for post #1.

My dad uncovered my first loyalty card ever. I would guess this is from about 1993, but I'm not sure.

Type in your name and email address here for a 20% off code for you (and a companion if you like) on a Virgin America flight.

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.

This post is part of a four-part series. In Part 1, we looked at the mechanics of the Delta Airlines program. In Part 2, we looked at its award chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific SkyMiles awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one SkyMile.

Now that we’ve looked at the rules of the SkyMiles 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 Delta Airlines program. In Part 2, we’ll look at its award chart and rules to find valuable awards. In Part 3, we’ll value specific SkyMiles awards. In Part 4, I’ll put a number on one SkyMile.

In this post, I’ll detail what I think are some of the best SkyMiles awards from North America.