United announced yesterday on Twitter that it would begin a new daily service from Houston to Santiago, Chile on December 7, 2014.

Update July 1, 2014:

The current offer on the Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is 20,000 miles after first purchase and payment of $79 annual fee.

Earn 20,000 award miles after your first purchase or balance transfer
Earn up to 15,000 award miles with balance transfers (1 mile per $1 transferred) within 30 days of account opening
Earn 2 award miles per $1 on ticket purchases directly from Miles &

Starting March 1, 2015, you will earn award miles on United tickets according to the cost of the ticket instead of the distance flown.

Delta announced a nearly identical move a few months ago, and at the time my headline included "The Sky is Not Falling."

The sky is still not falling. For everyone except United elites, these changes will have very little impact.

Update July 1, 2014:

The current offer on the Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is 20,000 miles after first purchase and payment of $79 annual fee.

Earn 20,000 award miles after your first purchase or balance transfer
Earn up to 15,000 award miles with balance transfers (1 mile per $1 transferred) within 30 days of account opening
Earn 2 award miles per $1 on ticket purchases directly from Miles &

Reader Milezjunkie has generously donated a pair of United Club passes that expire June 30, 2014.

Here are the United Club locations to check whether you’ll be able to use a pass on your next trip.

If you can use the passes between June 12, 2014 (because they will take a few days to get to you) and June 30, 2014, there are two ways to enter to win them!

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On Friday, I wrote about a revolutionary idea:

You can use the Barclaycard Arrival PlusTM World Elite MasterCard® to get 1.52 LifeMiles per dollar on all purchases.

Anatomy of an Award posts highlight real awards I've booked to show you the techniques needed to book your dream trip.

Recently the MileValue Award Booking Service had a client who was looking to travel to Costa Rica with his family of three in business class.

This. Times Four.

I'm dipping in to my personal stash to give away a pair of United Club passes that expire June 30, 2014.

Here are the United Club locations to check whether you’ll be able to use a pass on your next trip.

If you can use the passes between June 5, 2014 (because they will take a few days to get to you) and June 30, 2014, there are two ways to enter to win them!

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United left one of the best values on their award chart when they devalued their chart in February.

You can fly between Southern South America--Brazil, Argentina, Chile--and Africa for 30k miles each way in economy and 45k miles each way in business class as long as your itinerary features South African Airways' flights between Sao Paulo and Johannesburg.

This is such a high value award that when reader Ryan pointed it out to me, we both thought it was a mistake.

According to the Wall Street Journal, airlines are opening up more award space this year compared to last year because of pressure from banks, accounting rules, and consultant studies.

In the short term, that's good for us. More award space: woohoo!

But in the long run, these pressures could cause more airlines to move to revenue-based frequent flyer programs. Revenue-based redemptions: boohoo!

Every year IdeaWorks comes out with one of the worst-conceived studies imaginable in an attempt to quantify which frequent flyer programs make redemptions the easiest.