Are you better off using Avios or American Airlines miles for a trip to South America?

I'm at the beginning of probably nine months of travel, with almost no flights booked and only the vaguest sense of where I'll head and how I'll get there.

Off peak awards allow us to stretch our miles further by booking discounted awards to select regions during certain pre-determined dates. Off peak awards are offered by several airlines, and this post will put all the off peak awards I know of in one place.

While off peak awards are often less desirable dates, there are some off peak dates that are actually my favorite times to visit a country.

Update: The deal died within an hour of this post. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook to avoid missing these time-sensitive deals.

American Airlines' best Business and First Class is on its new 777-300ERs.

Delta has an award sale for economy awards booked by November 3, 2014 and flown between December 3, 2014 and February 18, 2015 within the United States, Caribbean, and Americas.

The discounts are nice, especially to Southern South America (Chile, Argentina, Brazil):

There are a ton of restrictions:

Blackout dates: December 19 through December 24, 2014, December 26, 2014 through January 5, 2015, January 16, 2015, January 19, 2015, February 13, 2015 and February 16, 2015
Blackout cities: Caracas, Venezuela; Cancun, Mexico;

Qatar Airways has begun flying its A380s from Doha to London and will begin service to Paris and Bangkok soon.

There are a lot of luxury options between the Middle East and Europe, so I want to focus on the route between Doha and Bangkok that begins December 1.

Award space is wide open on the Qatar A380 between Doha and Bangkok for two people in Business Class.

Update 11/6/14: Delta.com is again displaying Alaska Airlines and Virgin Australia award space. The disappearance must have been a glitch. Bookmark this post in case the glitch recurs!

Delta.com is no longer displaying award space on Alaska Airlines or Virgin Australia. You can search for award space on both airlines on other websites and book it by phone with Delta.

Delta.com is pretty terrible.

Lufthansa First Class is one of the nicest ways to travel between the United States and Europe.

Update 11/17/14: To book a stopover on an international award, you need to call Delta because the functionality has been removed from the website. I speculate that starting 1/1/15, Delta awards will not allow stopovers.

One Mile at a Time reports that Delta has stealthily eliminated stopovers on awards.

That's not quite correct, but something very fishy is going on. Here's how I know it is not true.

Above is a roundtrip award from Washington DC to Los Angeles. On the outbound, there is a one week stopover in Minneapolis.

All credit card offers in this post have expired, but they might come back.

This card offer has expired.