Singapore Airlines First Class and Business Class space is hard to get with United and US Air miles. Except right now, there is a glitch you can exploit, and the space is widely available.

Or: Did You Earn United Status Without Knowing It?

I have Silver Status on United. See! ---------->

It just posted a few days ago even though my last paid flight with United was in March. What was happening? I had earned Silver Status in March, but United's errors--human and computer--had kept my status from updating to Silver.

There are two requirements to reach United Premier Silver status: accrue 25,000 Premier Miles and fly four United or Copa flights.

Recently I had two clients of my Award Booking Service want to add a few 23 hour layovers onto their United award from Cleveland to South Africa. All the legacy US carriers have a rule in place that on international layovers, under 24 hours is just a layover, but over 24 hours is a stopover.

This distinction is crucial since no US carrier allows more than one en route stopover internationally.

For some, Lufthansa First Class is their aspirational goal. Using United miles, there is a (poorly kept) secret for how to get Lufthansa First Class seats: wait until the last week or even the last day!

Lufthansa only releases its first class availability to United right at the wire. For instance, I am sitting in the Lufthansa business lounge in Frankfurt right now, waiting to fly FRA-LHR-LAX on Lufthansa and United business class.

Reader Martin asks: I am trying to book IAD-CDG, BRU-IAD and trying to add my free oneway from IAD to ?? No mater which destination I choose the page always comes up with no available flights even though I check those flights separately and I can see there is availability. Any ideas?

It seems like I've gotten a similar question almost daily since I broke the news that you can add free oneways onto most United awards.

As a companion to the mega-popular Free Oneways on United Awards, I've made this video of me booking such an award.

Yesterday, I wrote about how to book free stopovers online on your United awards. While researching for that post, I made a typo that caused me to discover a loophole that allows us to get free oneway flights on United awards in much the same way we can get free oneways on American Airlines awards! This discovery completely changes the way I'll be booking United awards from now on.

Getting these free oneways requires taking advantage of United's booking rules that allow one stopover and two open jaws for international awards from the US.

Yesterday, I talked about how to book a stopover on an American Airlines award online. Booking an award with a stopover online saves time and money, so today I want to explain how to book a stopover on a United award online.

The main limitation when trying to book an award with a stopover online is that you can only book awards online when the airline whose miles you're using loads the availability of the partner whose planes you want to fly.

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

This is the eighteenth 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.