Merry Christmas from Ushuaia, Argentina.

I just had the pleasure of delivering presents at midnight in full Papá Noel (Santa Claus) suit to the hostel owners' excited 1-10 year old kids. I should have pictures soon, but I was too busy ho-ho-hoing to snap any.

First Class award space is widely available in Malaysia Airlines First Class on the A380, one of the world's nicest products., and easily bookable with American Airlines miles.

Last year I loved everything about my flight from Paris to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia Airlines First Class on the A380

United.com is convenient to use, but doesn't work very well.

I ran a simple search the other day, and got a different problem with a different solution for the outbound and the return.
The Plan
I was just running a search from Chicago to Sydney roundtrip.

Right now, awards:

booked with United miles
between the United States and Europe
for flights in January, February, and March 2015
on partner airlines
cost only 57,500 miles each way in Business Class

That's the same price that awards booked on United's own flights cost, and 12,500 miles off the normal price for Business Class awards on United partners--70,000 miles each way.

I have been monitoring what I believe to be an un-announced sale (rather than a glitch) closely because I am looking to book myself an award in Business Class from the United States to Seville

I just got an email today from Starwood Preferred Guest announcing up to a 25% discount on the purchase of Starpoints.

A friend passed along an article from Time.com that advocates doing something I've done a few times, but not described:

You can often get a cheaper price on a cash ticket if you book the ticket in foreign currency through airline's website designed for use by people in another country.

Update 7/28/16: The Prestige's offer has been improved to 40,000 bonus points after $4,000 in purchases in the first 3 months.

The Washington Post has an interesting poll running right now. It's really just one question about what you call the commercial airport closest to DC.

Beneath that, there are several demographic questions that I'm sure they'll try to correlate your answer like how old you are, where you grew up, and how often you fly out of that airport that we're trying to figure out what to call.

I grew up in Fredericksburg, VA, which is about equidistant from said airport, Dulles, and Richmond International Airport.

United is offering a 20% discount on roundtrip Saver economy awards booked this month to Hawaii, Mexico, and several ski and warm weather destinations in the continental United States.