Last month I booked myself an awesome award to the Maldives using AAdvantage miles and flying Etihad Airways Business Class.

Update: UA Insider on FlyerTalk confirms the delay in this post

The much-dreaded United award chart devaluation looks to be temporarily postponed until February 3rd.

Back in late October, United announced that they would be increasing the mileage costs of many awards, especially those flow in premium cabins.

United would also be splitting their award chart on February 1, 2014.

Here's how I got United to "manually sell" me award seats for an itinerary. While this technique is not possible in most circumstances, in my case, it turned no award into my dream award!

I was in the midst of constructing a simple roundtrip itinerary from the US to Europe when I ran into some big trouble.

United's online award calendar displayed Austrian award space on the only day I could return to the States.

This review is a continuation of my fun US Airways redemption that I wrote about back in this post. I reviewed Turkish Business Class: Washington DC to Istanbul and Cathay Pacific Business Class: Tokyo to Hong Kong already.

I was extremely excited for my nonstop flight from Tokyo to Washington-Dulles on ANA.

Per this thread on Flyertalk, Club Carlson is running a very interesting first quarter promotion. The full terms and conditions, as well as registration, can be found here. If you stay three nights at Club Carlson hotels between January 6th and April 13th, you will earn 38,000 bonus points.

What will 38,000 Club Carlson points get you?

38,000 points is enough for four free nights at a category 1 or one night at a category 4. The full award chart is below.

I nabbed a scarce First Class award from Australia to Los Angeles on Qantas during peak travel season and added a first class segment on American's new Airbus A321T from Los Angeles to New York-JFK, both in fully flat beds.

I'm incredibly excited to try out another First Class product on the Airbus A380, especially after my great experience on a Thai flight from Paris to Bangkok.

Relative to other Anatomy of Award posts, this one was simple to construct and even easier to book online. However, Qantas premium cabin award space isn't widely available.

This review is a continuation of my fun US Airways redemption that I wrote about back in this post. I reviewed Turkish Business Class: Washington DC to Istanbul already and had a similar (great) experience on my flight from Istanbul to Tokyo also in Turkish Business, so I am skipping to the next segment in Cathay Pacific Business Class.

I was in Tokyo, and I wanted to add a quick side trip onto my main award, and Hong Kong seemed like the logical spot.

Don't believe the award calendar on united.com!

The calendar should show you for an entire month whether any given day has Saver award space in economy, in a premium cabin, or in both. But the calendar is currently showing no Saver award space on days where there is Saver award space.

Don't believe the calendar. Some of those white days do have award space.

This is very inconvenient for award bookers.

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.