On many routes, Etihad releases tons of Business and First Class award space within one week of departure. You can book this ultra-luxury award space without fuel surcharges with American Airlines miles.

Twitter follower Patrick found four Etihad First Class award seats this week on a flight from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi and asked whether that was normal.

@OneMileataTime @garyleff @milevalue Has Etihad started releasing more first class space closer to date? See http://t.co/V8oIw8sAAW

— Patrick Srail (@patricksrail) March 8, 2015

The answer is that it depends on the route.

On many routes, Etihad releases tons of Business and First Class award space within one week of departure. You can book this ultra-luxury award space without fuel surcharges with American Airlines miles.

Twitter follower Patrick found four Etihad First Class award seats this week on a flight from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi and asked whether that was normal.

@OneMileataTime @garyleff @milevalue Has Etihad started releasing more first class space closer to date? See http://t.co/V8oIw8sAAW

— Patrick Srail (@patricksrail) March 8, 2015

The answer is that it depends on the route.

As I wrap up three months in Buenos Aires (on top of the six months I spent here in 2013), I'm going to publish three posts: The Five Best Restaurants in Buenos Aires, What to Do Every Night of the Week in Buenos Aires, and What You Need to Know Before Traveling to Buenos Aires.

Before I jump into my favorite restaurants in Buenos Aires, first a huge tip and a disclaimer.

Tip: http://pickupthefork.com/

It's actually hard to not find the blog Pick Up the Fork, since it shows up on pretty any google search related to Buenos Aires

Emirates First Class is not bookable with Alaska Airlines miles for flights past March 28, 2015. There has been a workaround, but I think all Alaska agents have gotten the memo not to use it.

I reached out to Alaska Airlines for a statement on what's going on. This is from a spokeswoman for Alaska:
It’s not a glitch. Emirate awards show in our system if there are a minimum of three seats available per flight. The minimum threshold is due to the connection in place between Emirates and our shopping system vendor.

For the past few years, I've noticed that American Airlines basically blacks out award space for several weeks from mid-December to mid-January on all or most of its routes.
What I Mean by Blackout
This isn't a hard blackout during which you can't use miles at all. It's a MileSAAver blackout. No MileSAAver award space will appear on a route for about a month, so you need to spend 2-4x the MileSAAver price if you want to book an AAnytime award.

For a quick refresher, MileSAAver is American's cheapest level of award space and its most heavily capacity controlled.

The Discover it Miles Card

Wandering Aramean writes a Boarding Area blog and also has created a suite of tools that can be used for free by anyone. One I just saw (thanks Million Mile Secrets) is his Avios Map.

The Avios Map works like this:

Type in any airport in the world.
The map shows all the airports you can fly to directly for 4.5k, 7.5k, 10k, and 12.5k Avios in economy.

You can use the map to see where you can go from your home airport for what price.

Wandering Aramean writes a Boarding Area blog and also has created a suite of tools that can be used for free by anyone. One I just saw (thanks Million Mile Secrets) is his Avios Map.

The Avios Map works like this:

Type in any airport in the world.
The map shows all the airports you can fly to directly for 4.5k, 7.5k, 10k, and 12.5k Avios in economy.

You can use the map to see where you can go from your home airport for what price.

Every time you use your credit card, the bank is earning swipe fees from the merchant. It's these swipe fees plus other ways that banks profit off credit cards--interest fees, late fees, advertising to cardholders--that pay for the perks we get from credit cards.

How much of these fees are rebated to us? According to a recent article in The Economist:
[C]ard issuers are providing bigger rebates on purchases, more frequent-flyer miles as a sign-up bonus and longer interest-free periods for those who transfer balances from other cards.

Every time you use your credit card, the bank is earning swipe fees from the merchant. It's these swipe fees plus other ways that banks profit off credit cards--interest fees, late fees, advertising to cardholders--that pay for the perks we get from credit cards.

How much of these fees are rebated to us? According to a recent article in The Economist:
[C]ard issuers are providing bigger rebates on purchases, more frequent-flyer miles as a sign-up bonus and longer interest-free periods for those who transfer balances from other cards.