Yesterday, prices for award tickets booked with United miles surged for most routes as the devaluation announced last year finally took effect.

But the prices we're seeing on united.com aren't the prices I expected based on how United said the devaluation would work.

To review, United made its award pricing a lot more complicated by splitting its single award chart into two charts--one for awards on United planes and one for awards on partner planes.

In case your award flies both United flights and partner flights, United told us how to determine whether your award would price according to the

Update 2/4/14: Devaluation is live. It's different than we were told it would be.

Update at 3:18 PM: Some routes now show the updated price. For instance LAX-HNL is 22,500 in economy. Some routes don't. For instance ORD-FRA for today's flight in Lufthansa Business is showing 50,000 (the old price, new price is 70,000). And many searches show no results when there should be tons of results.

Two excellent offers are floating around right now for the Alaska Airlines credit card from Bank of America:

30k miles after first purchase
40k miles after spending $10k in the first six months (for elites only)

It might surprise you to learn that the bonus of 30,000 miles is far better than the bonus of 40,000 miles.

Why? Why do I love Alaska miles?

I was emailed the 30,000 mile offer three days ago since I am "a valued customer of both Alaska Airlines and Bank of America." I have an Alaska Airlines credit card.

The MileValue Award Booking Service is standing by to book your United awards before United miles are devalued on February 3, 2014.

Awards are bookable this weekend that lock in the current price for all of 2014.

On Monday you'll pay 110k miles for one way in First Class to Europe. Pay 67,500 miles this weekend. Here are a bunch of other awards that are increasing in price on Monday!

Book now or forever hold your peace.

For more information about the Service, testimonials, and full pricing details, see this page.

This is it. January 31, 2014. The day we've dreaded since United's trick or treat on October 31, 2013.

I got an email from a reader that demonstrates a common point of confusion about stopovers on American Airlines awards.

There are several posts on the new PointBreaks list, which allows us to book hotel rooms through March 31, 2014 for only $35 per night. Even if you’ve read those, read this. I’ve honed my strategy for getting $35 per night rooms quite a bit, and I want to share it, so everyone can have access to the best practices.

All Nippon Airways (ANA)--a Japanese Star Alliance carrier--launches a new route between Tokyo-Haneda and Vancouver from March 30, 2014.

Saver award space is excellent on the route in economy and business class. You can book the space this week--by January 31, 2014--with United miles at pre-devaluation rates.

I'm not confident that united.com will price awards correctly starting next week or offer us all the best award choices.

February 1 marks the introduction of two new United charts that are much worse than the current chart (so you should be burning United miles for 2014 travel this week).

The way the charts should work according to United's posts on FlyerTalk is that:

Awards with all flights operated by United should be on the United chart.
Awards in which United-operated flights are at least one cabin higher than partner flights should be on the United chart.