There used to be two programs that offered Emirates First Class and Business Class redemptions at reasonable rates:

Japan Airlines Mileage Bank
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan

Now there is only one.
Current State of Alaska/Emirates Awards
Sadly, Alaska Airlines massively devalued their Emirates chart with no notice.

Today Alaska Airlines announced it will buy Virgin America, after weeks of speculation. Alaska beat out JetBlue in the bidding.

Alaska is predicting that it will take nine months to close the deal and another year beyond that for the carriers to combine onto a single operating certificate.

To give you an idea of the relative sizes of these airlines, look at the 2015 passenger numbers for North American airlines, according to Wikipedia.

Virgin America is a minnow.

Yesterday, Alaska Airlines doubled the price of flying Emirates First Class awards with no notice whatsoever. Here was my take:
Devaluations stink.
Major devaluations stink more. (Please do it the Aeroplan way of small yearly devaluations with a few months notice instead.)
No-notice major devaluation stink the most.
They are plainly unethical. For weeks Alaska has been selling its miles with a bonus to entice you to buy.

The Hilton HHonors Signature Card's (the one that earns points) sign up bonus has expired.

Alaska Airlines has massively devalued its award charts to fly Emirates with zero notice.

American Airlines is offering up to 115,000 bonus miles on the purchase of miles through April 8, 2016. You can now buy 265,000 American Airlines miles including bonus for $4,787 or 1.81 cents each.

The bonus miles are tiered, based on how many miles you purchase. The best deal is to buy 150,000.

American Airlines miles cost 2.95 cents each plus a 7.5% excise tax, and every purchase has a $30 processing fee.

Alaska Airlines miles can now be used to book Hainan Airlines! Award space is searchable on alaskaair.com, insanely cheap, and widely available to Asia, though there are mild fuel surcharges.

The partnership was announced last year, and the Alaska-Hainan page originally said award bookings would be available in November 2015.

The Starwood Preferred Guest personal and business credit cards from American Express now come with 35,000 bonus Starpoints for spending $3,000 and $5,000 respectively in the first three months of cardmembership.

Links:

Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express (personal)
Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express

The normal sign up bonus is 25,000 points, the twice yearly limited time offer is 30,000 points. This is the highest public sign up bonus ever on these cards.

You can get both the Citi Prestige with 40,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first three months and the Citi ThankYou Premier with 40,000 bonus ThankYou Points after spending $3,000 in the first three months, as long as you apply at least eight days apart.

Meet both minimum spending requirements, and you'll have at least 96,000 ThankYou Points, in one account if you follow the simple steps to combine your accounts.

Here are the top eight ways I would use the 86,000 point sign up bonus for flights in Economy and First

Hilton is increasing the category of 24 hotels and decreasing the category of 15 hotels for bookings effective March 30, 2016.

If the hotel you want is going up in category tomorrow, book the hotel now to lock in the lower, current rate.