I’m very excited to announce the first MileValue dinner since October on Saturday, January 25 at 7 PM on Oahu, either in Waikiki or Honolulu.

As a special treat, I've confirmed the attendance of Rene from Delta Points. Rene is the go-to expert on all things Delta from status, to the myriad credit card offerings, to redemptions, to aircraft, to getting bumped, to... you get the idea.

Delta and SkyTeam are major players from HNL.

Delta is well represented at HNL.

Updating this post

Virgin Atlantic is back with another incredible discount on its economy awards to the United Kingdom.

For about 13k miles plus $100 one way, you can go from Boston, New York, Washington DC, or Chicago to London, Manchester, Glasgow, or Edinburgh.

For about 16k miles plus $100 one way, you can go from Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas, Los Angeles or San Francisco to London, Machester, Glasgow, or Edinburgh.

Roundtrip prices including miles, taxes, and fuel surcharges.

United announced a massive devaluation of its miles on October 31, 2013 to take effect for awards booked February 1, 2014 or later.

The Frontier Airlines World MasterCard® recently increased its sign up bonus to 40,000 bonus miles after spending $500 in the first 90 days.

The sign up bonus is extremely generous for such a small minimum spending requirement, and the miles go a long way because of Frontier's cheap award chart.

Domestic flights--including to Alaska in the middle of the summer--are only 10k miles each way.

Buried in Delta's major award chart devaluation last year was a second piece of bad news: Delta awards could no longer be put on hold under any circumstances.

But there had to be a way, I thought.

The offers for the cards listed in this post have expired, so their links have been removed. Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

Business competition is good for consumers. We've been losing airline competition rapidly for the last five years as Northwest, Continental, and US Airways have been folded into Delta, United, and American.

With US Airways' official oneworld join date still over two months away (March 30), speculation is rampant over the design of their combined frequent flyer program. What will the new award chart look like, especially in light of United's massive devaluation and Delta's unprecedented double devaluation? Which routing rules will the program establish?

Because everyone loves to wonder, this post is meant to highlight the strengths of each program.

This review is a continuation of my fun US Airways redemption that I wrote about back in this post. I tweaked the itinerary slightly in the interim,  instead electing to fly nonstop from Washington DC to Istanbul and Istanbul to Tokyo on Turkish and Tokyo to Washington DC on ANA. A quick side trip to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific using Avios rounded out the trip. Those reports will come later.

I was thrilled to try out Turkish' business class product. I had heard rave reviews of their food and their lie-flat seats seemed solid.