Yesterday I booked an award with United miles from Los Angeles to Phuket, Thailand with a later free oneway from Los Angeles to Newark.

The award illustrates last-second award searching, problem solving with error messages, free oneways, and free changes to awards within 24 hours.

How can you book a similar award?

To convince my friend in Los Angeles to meet me in Phuket next week, I offered to book his ticket with miles.

The contest is over. There were 209 comments and 107 retweets. Congrats to Mike Faust (twitter retweet) on winning! Check back every Friday for potential MileValue giveaways.

Longtime reader Jeff is generously donating two United Club passes that expire 2/28/15 to one lucky winner. There are two ways to win: a comment or a retweet.

United has lounges all over the world. The clubs are a pleasant place to relax in a comfortable chair, use free wifi, and enjoy free snack and drinks. Here are the amenities.

I think it's a big mistake to be a hub-captive. There's no reason that the credit cards you open have to be related to the dominant carrier at your airport.

Your life will be better if you instead open up the best card for the trip you want regardless of the airline that dominates your home airport.

Why should you ignore your hubby?

Imagine someone in Atlanta who wants to visit Buenos Aires.

Delta is the dominant carrier at ATL, and the only one with a direct flight to Buenos Aires.

I think it's a big mistake to be a hub-captive. There's no reason that the credit cards you open have to be related to the dominant carrier at your airport.

Your life will be better if you instead open up the best card for the trip you want regardless of the airline that dominates your home airport.

Why should you ignore your hubby?

Imagine someone in Atlanta who wants to visit Buenos Aires.

Delta is the dominant carrier at ATL, and the only one with a direct flight to Buenos Aires.

Early planners are looking to book their summer trips to Europe

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.

I've already written about last second award space to Europe and to Asia this summer. The gist is that some airlines release unsold seats as award seats in the last few days or weeks before travel.

TAP Portugal does a bit of that on its three routes to the US, but it also has award space available in August to Europe in economy and business class, which is very scarce at the moment.

United scared me on Friday, and I wrote about that fear on Sunday, by saying changes were coming to the MileagePlus program.

That fear was unfounded as United introduced unambiguously good changes to MileagePlus, though very minor changes from my perspective, in the form of a partnership with Marriott.

What does this mean for you?

Status Match

If you're United Gold or higher, you'll get Marriott Gold Status through January 2014.

United scared me on Friday, and I wrote about that fear on Sunday, by saying changes were coming to the MileagePlus program.

That fear was unfounded as United introduced unambiguously good changes to MileagePlus, though very minor changes from my perspective, in the form of a partnership with Marriott.

What does this mean for you?

Status Match

If you're United Gold or higher, you'll get Marriott Gold Status through January 2014.

United scared me a lot on Friday when it tweeted that changes were coming to MileagePlus.

United still hasn't told us what those changes are, but insists we'll like them.

It's very unlikely I'll like them much. It could be a minor enhancement, but there are very few things I would change about United MileagePlus that United would also change.