I gave up thinking that free tickets are free many, many years ago!
Last week I started shopping around for two awards from ATH to Central America (and back
). Not tried A3 yet, I leave it for the end. You'd be amazed a) at how much real money you usually have to pay for the free ticket using three different programs (all of them European). In addition, although one of them charges X number of miles, when you attempt to book one of them the price (in miles) goes up as soon as you get to do your booking. Later tomorrow, I'll talk with one of A3's agents to get their prices to (miles-wise they're by far the cheapest). I'm interested to see whether they'll quote me different taxes if I book all the way with UA as opposed to LH.