Tuesday news broke that US Airways is not collecting fuel surcharges on British Airways flights on award tickets, which is surprising since American Airlines and British Airways have long collected fuel surcharges on British Airways flights.

US Airways miles are the most valuable miles around because of:

US Airways' very cheap award chart
US Airways' impressive roster of partners including surcharge-free British Airways
US Airways' lax routing rules on award tickets

Combining those three elements, I just put on hold a US Airways award from New York to Sydney with a stopover in Hong Kong one direction for 140k US

Update: Super reader Dave made a map of the locations of the Category 9 and 10 properties for visual learners.

Super reader Jeremy has created the most valuable spreadsheet imaginable for the Hilton HHonors program that you can download for free here.

The spreadsheet lists:

all 34 Category 1 hotels
all 131 Category 2 hotels
all 46 Category 9 hotels
all 10 Category 10 hotels

For each hotel, the name, location, and a link to its Trip Advisor reviews are listed.

Jeremy took the information from Hilton's PDF of all its hotels' categories and made it much more useful and

My friend has big trip aspirations for this summer, but nothing booked.

Approx July 12: Boston to France, Italy, or Spain
July 13/14 to 24/25: work on a vineyard in France, Italy, or Spain
July 25: vineyard location to Croatia
July 26 to August 2: Yacht Week
August 2: Croatia to Greece
August 10/11: Greece to Boston
August 22: Boston to Colombia
August 31: Colombia to Costa Rica
Sept ~7/8: Costa Rica to San Francisco

She emailed me for my suggestions.

Since US Airways joined the oneworld Alliance on March 31, I think they have the most valuable miles of any airline. The three main reasons:

The world's cheapest award chart.

TAM, the largest airline in Brazil, joined oneworld today March 31, 2014.

 

The oneworld roster with the addition of TAM.

You can now book a one way flight from the United States to Brazil for 4,000 Avios and $97.50!

TAM flights are bookable with American Airlines miles and British Airways Avios and searchable on ba.com. American Airlines and British Airways do not collect fuel surcharges on TAM flights.

TAM has flights between Brazil and New York-JFK, Miami, and Orlando. All three American cities have flights to Rio de Janeiro–Galeão and São Paulo–Guarulhos.

On February 1, United miles became much less valuable for premium cabin flights.

Not only did all first class awards outside of the western hemisphere go way up in price, but partner first class awards went way, way up.

Since people who want to fly first class awards want the swankiest, most aspirational flights, the increase in the partner award price is a big problem.

United Global First is good.

For flights between the US and Europe, Austrian Airlines releases its economy class award seats to partners 298 days before the flight and its business class award seats to partners 88 days before the flight.

Austrian routes between the US and Europe have economy award space up to 298 days out

Austrian is a Star Alliance member that operates five routes to North America from its hub in Vienna:

New York-JFK
Chicago
Washington-Dulles
Toronto (don't forget about routing to Europe via Canada)
Newark (begins July 2, 2014)

Austrian operates two cabin Boeing 777s and 767s

There is:

widely available
underpriced
economy award space
for two passengers
for all of 2014
to Australia
with the opportunity to stop in Hawaii for a few days in either direction.

If you have 75,000 American Airlines miles and about $100, you can fly a roundtrip award from the United States to Australia on almost any day you want this year.

Buried in Delta's major award chart devaluation last year was a second piece of bad news: Delta awards could no longer be put on hold under any circumstances.

But there had to be a way, I thought.

In Part 1, I shared my experiences at the 2012 Euro Cup and how they informed my plan for the World Cup. I also discussed the flight and hotel awards I booked for myself.