United flies from Los Angeles to Melbourne directly with its newest plane the 787-9 Dreamliner.

15 hours 45 minutes

Award space on United's Dreamliners in Business Class has been abysmal, but I wanted to check in and see if anything was different on this route.

We want to get into these flat beds up front

The good news is that there is award space on the route in both directions for two people in Business Class.

What is the award space picture? 
How many miles does the flight to Australia

United is offering a 20% discount on economy awards to Europe flown this winter.

Instead of the normal 60,000 miles roundtrip, Saver awards to nine airports in Europe will cost only 48,000 miles roundtrip.

This is a good deal if you were already planning to use United miles to fly to Europe this winter, but there are better deals for winter travel to Europe.

How does the deal work? (One ways?)
What are the better off peak awards to Europe?

Basics of United Award Sale
The full terms and conditions of the sale are available here.

Aer Lingus, a partner of United MileagePlus and British Airways Avios, debuts a Washington-Dulles to Dublin route on May 1, 2015.

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.

Off peak awards allow us to stretch our miles further by booking discounted awards to select regions during certain pre-determined dates. Off peak awards are offered by several airlines, and this post will put all the off peak awards I know of in one place.

While off peak awards are often less desirable dates, there are some off peak dates that are actually my favorite times to visit a country.

Update 10/23/14: Commenter Jeremy finds the award space now on aeroplan.com, and I can confirm that the space on these Ethiopian flights is now bookable and is still excellent! (None of the rest of the post has been updated to reflect this information.)

Ethiopian Airlines will begin flying Los Angeles to Dublin to Addis Ababa in June 2015 with a 787 Dreamliner.

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.

Asiana has the best award chart in the Star Alliance. That means that you can book any of the 27 Star Alliance airlines, including United, for fewer miles on many routes with Asiana miles than with better known programs like United, Lufthansa, LifeMiles, Singapore, and Air Canada.

Asiana is a 1:1 transfer partner of Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints.

Sometimes you can go really far for not very miles by finding underpriced countries on your favorite award chart.

Award charts, by their nature, group several countries together for a single price. The countries at the extremes of each group are often underpriced relative to the rest of the group, leaving you the chance to get a great deal with your miles.

Here are five examples of underpriced countries on the American Airlines, United, Delta, US Airways, and British Airways award charts.
1.