Yesterday, American Airlines revised its frequent flier mileage redemption amounts for some awards, increased some ticketing fees and took away some baggage benefits.  But the worst news was that they removed the ability to tack on a free one way trip to an international award. Luckily, you can still book a free one way ticket in the US and I’ll share how on, you guessed it, United Airlines.

As I illustrated, you could book a one way award ticket for no extra miles before or after your one way or roundtrip international award ticket on American Airlines. Most recently, I used this to book a first class ticket on American from Albuquerque to New York in October, then to Hong Kong from New York on Cathay Pacific business class for sometime in 2015, all for 55,000 miles.  If I redeemed miles separately for these two flights, it would have cost me 25,000 miles to fly from Albuquerque to New York and another 55,000 from New York to Hong Kong for a total of 80,000 miles. It’s not a loophole; very obviously, American employs legal experts to examine every single rule with a fine-tooth comb. Quite simply, a free stopover was a benefit that American offered that no longer exists.

Fortunately, you can still get a free one way ticket in the US on a roundtrip international award on United Airlines. For example, a roundtrip flight from Newark to Tokyo in economy is 70,000 miles.  United.com will allow you to add an additional flight in the US for no additional miles, as I did in the example below to Los Angeles.  It’s a savings of 12,500 miles.  Be sure to use the Multiple Destinations search on United’s website to construct your award ticket.

Ticket to Tokyo with no stopover

Ticket to Tokyo with a stopover for the same amount of miles