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.

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.

Earlier this month, the 50,000 mile bonus offer on the United Explorer Card publicly ended.

If you THINK BIG, and take an amazing multi-destination trip, you'll need to book several tickets to hop between destinations.

In the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia, flights are fairly cheap because of the many competing airlines, including low cost carriers. In other regions, like Africa and South America, short flights can be exorbitantly expensive as a lack of competition drives up prices.

When ticket prices are expensive, that's the time to use miles. I've already laid out the cheapest intra-region bargain awards with American Airlines and United miles.

United partner Azul, a Brazilian low cost carrier, is adding flies to the United States in December 2014.

December 1, 2014: Viracopos-Campinas (VCP) to Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
December 15, 2014: Viracopos-Campinas (VCP) to Orlando (MCO)

Note that Viracopos-Campinas is often called a Sao Paulo airport. It is about 50 miles from the city center and farther away than Sao Paulo's other international airport (GRU.)

These new American destinations are in addition to the 100+ destinations served in Brazil.

You can book Azul flight with United miles.

As promised in yesterday’s post on the Five Under-Priced Awards on the American Airlines Chart, today I'll post six under-priced awards on the United chart.

The basic premise of these posts and my post on the Coolest Thing You Can Do with 60,000 Miles was connecting far-flung regions into a single trip by taking advantage of under-priced awards between the regions.

Why American and United awards?

A few days ago I flew from Honolulu to Guam in United economy and got myself five seats in a row, so I could sleep during the flight.

Even at 6'4", I only needed four consecutive seats for sleep. I raised the arm rests, collected a few pillows and blankets, and had some great sleep for a few hours after take off.

Yesterday, I flew a United 777-200 equipped with the carrier's latest entertainment concept: I could freely stream hundreds of movies and TV shows on my own laptop or United's iOS app.

You can still pay United's award prices from January 2014 and before for premium cabin awards.

The catch is that you need to be changing an existing award that you booked February 2, 2014 or earlier.