I asked longtime award booker and occasional blog contributor JB to write about a very interesting Delta award he just booked.

A lot of people think Delta miles are worthless, but there are no other miles that could book a single convenient award with long stops in Tahiti and Sydney plus an overnight in Auckland.

A client contacted the MileValue Award Booking Service requesting a slightly modified version a MileValue classic: Tahiti, New Zealand & Australia on One Trip Using Delta Skymiles.

She had tried another award booking service that failed to convince Delta to book the award.

United miles are the best to Europe, though the routes with gold mine award space for Summer 2015 might surprise you. For Summer 2014, I wrote Route from the US to Europe via Canada for Better Award Space, and I decided to check back in on some of our old favorite routes to see if they were again gold mines for 2015.

The answer is a resounding yes.

Are you better off using Avios or American Airlines miles for a trip to South America?

I'm at the beginning of probably nine months of travel, with almost no flights booked and only the vaguest sense of where I'll head and how I'll get there.

Update: The deal died within an hour of this post. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook to avoid missing these time-sensitive deals.

American Airlines' best Business and First Class is on its new 777-300ERs.

Lufthansa First Class is one of the nicest ways to travel between the United States and Europe.

Update 11/17/14: To book a stopover on an international award, you need to call Delta because the functionality has been removed from the website. I speculate that starting 1/1/15, Delta awards will not allow stopovers.

One Mile at a Time reports that Delta has stealthily eliminated stopovers on awards.

That's not quite correct, but something very fishy is going on. Here's how I know it is not true.

Above is a roundtrip award from Washington DC to Los Angeles. On the outbound, there is a one week stopover in Minneapolis.

I get a ton of requests at my Award Booking Service for people who want to fly from the United States to Australia or New Zealand over Christmas and New Year's with their frequent flyer miles. Usually the request is to fly in Business or First Class.

I want to dissuade you from this goal because it is one of the toughest awards to book.

Last month I wrote "The Easiest Places to Get with Miles." Miles are awesome and can get you almost anywhere in the world cheaper and more luxuriously than most people realize.

Virgin Atlantic is a London-based airline that serves or has plans to serve 12 American airports. Virgin Atlantic releases a ton of award space in Upper Class between the United States and Europe in the last days and weeks before departure.

You can book Virgin Atlantic Upper Class with Delta miles.