EVA Air--Taiwan's second largest carrier--has announced that it will join the Star Alliance June 18, 2013.

Reader Christopher emailed me an exciting tip the other day: free oneways are possible on United awards within the continental USA and Canada. I already knew free oneways were possible on international United awards and awards to Hawaii, but this was news.

He sent me some screenshots, and I was able to replicate his findings and add some more of my own. I learned four things:

Christopher's tip: You can get a free oneway on roundtrip Standard economy awards within the US and Canada. That means three oneway Standard awards for 50k United miles.

United, US Airways, American, and Delta among others rely on award charts to determine the price of your award.

The MileValue Award Booking Service now costs $111 per person per award (for most awards--more pricing info below.) As always, you don't pay if we don't find an award that meets your needs.

United has added its Dreamliners back to the schedule, which is good news for plane geeks. The FAA grounded United's 787-8 Dreamliners in January, but they are back on the upcoming flight schedule starting May 31.

Why This Is Cool

United recently acquired several Boeing 787 Dreamliners and announced the first international routes that will be serviced by the plane.

The plane has no first class (Global First), 36 business class seats (BusinessFirst), and a few hundred economy seats.

There are a lot of cool things you can do with miles. One of the coolest things I've thought up, and one which I am strongly contemplating booking, would turn 57.5k United miles and 10k Avios into:

A trip to a Pacific atoll to be determined, Guam, and Japan. Three places I've never been.
Fourteen hours on the famous Island Hopper route.
Flat bed business class for seven hours.

The center piece for this plan is the Island Hopper route, which I became obsessed with last week and read everything a google search could find.

The Avianca/TACA LifeMiles program sells miles for around 1.36 cents per mile, which means you can get into luxury seats like Singapore business class beds on an A380 for less than the cost of a paid economy ticket.

LifeMiles selling for 1.3 cents is not new. Scott wrote about that deal in September. Every month or two LifeMiles has a "2 for 1" promo that makes their miles a steal.

I spent five hours booking a roundtrip from Buenos Aires to Bariloche this week. But at least I avoided an hour and a half in taxis to pick up paper tickets! HUH!?

Bariloche is 851 miles to the southwest of Buenos Aires as the plane flies.

I decided to book a last-second economy award for two because Bariloche is on the northern edge of Patagonia, and summer is over.

Unfortunately, all great trips must come to an end. Three-and-a-half months before the end of my stay in Argentina, it is time to book my oneway return to the US: from Buenos Aires (EZE) to Denver (DEN).

Planning

I need to be in Denver for a wedding at the end of July. Because of this, my travel dates are limited--I want to maximize my time in Argentina while still arriving in Denver before the wedding.

Tomorrow your miles will be worth money than today for two reasons:

The price of paid tickets is rising.
The knowledge of how to use miles efficiently is increasing.

I see a lot of arguments that miles should be used now because they depreciate. I don't see it like that. I see the value of miles basically following this pattern.

The default position of miles is to increase in value. Then every once in a while, they take a sharp drop.