Just a few spots remain for the dinner this Saturday, May 31 at 7 PM in Honolulu.

I’m very excited to announce the second MileValue dinner on Oahu on Saturday, May 31 at 7 PM at a Thai place town-side.

An unfortunately dark picture at the last dinner.

I’m very excited to announce the second MileValue dinner on Oahu on Saturday, May 31 at 7 PM at a Thai place town-side.

An unfortunately dark picture at the last dinner.

MileValue has gone down twice in the last week.

The site was down for almost 48 hours starting last Wednesday because I screwed up while moving the site to a private server to keep up with growing readership.

Luckily a loyal reader helped get the site back up about 24 hours earlier than it otherwise would have been up. Check out @pcg on twitter. He's a wizard with WordPress and web hosting (and judging by his twitter handle, an early adopter of twitter.)

Yesterday, the site also went down for about 12 hours.

There will be a MileValue meet up tomorrow (2/17/14) at The Australian at 20 W 38th St in Manhattan from 5 PM to 8 PM.

I've wanted to hold a meet up in New York City for quite a long time. Unfortunately I will only be there from Monday through Thursday, so I can't hold a customary MileValue dinner. And I really apologize for not having my other plans set soon enough to give more than 24 hours notice.

But I hope everyone will be able to join me for Happy Hour at the Australian.

I’m very excited to announce the first MileValue dinner since October on Saturday, January 25 at 7 PM on Oahu, either in Waikiki or Honolulu.

As a special treat, I've confirmed the attendance of Rene from Delta Points. Rene is the go-to expert on all things Delta from status, to the myriad credit card offerings, to redemptions, to aircraft, to getting bumped, to... you get the idea.

Delta and SkyTeam are major players from HNL.

Delta is well represented at HNL.

Countries Visited (21)
In chronological order (except for the US, which would be third chronologically):

Australia (11 days)
New Zealand (10 days)
Argentina (5.5 months)
Paraguay (8 days)
Uruguay (3 days)
South Africa (9 days)
Germany (7 days)
United Kingdom (2 days)
Sweden (2 days)
France (4 days)
Malaysia (8 days)
Thailand (7 days)
Austria (2 days)
Slovakia (2 days)
Hungary (4 days)
Croatia (3 days)
Italy (1 day)
Belgium (1 day)
Norway (1 day)
Netherlands (1 day)
United States (3.5 months)

Premium Airline Cabins Flown (12)
In chronological order (with links to trip reports):

United Global First
Emirates First

2013 was a year of several major devaluation announcements including:

United (kicks in February 1, 2014)
Southwest (kicks in March 31, 2014)
Delta (already kicked in on current award bookings for travel that starts February 1, 2014 or later)
Hyatt (kicks in January 7, 2014)
Ultimate Rewards (with three major transfer partners devaluing--United, Southwest, and Hyatt--the program took a major hit through no fault of its own)

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Merry Christmas from everyone at MileValue to you and your family.

Christmas 2008, the View from the Conrad in Punta del Este, Uruguay

There will be no new posts the rest of the week. Check out some of these classics if you can't take a few days off from thinking about miles!

Negative Price Oneways to the Caribbean (Dies in One Month!)
My Favorite Hotel Promo of 2013 Will Return in 2014.

Currently, the following United award (Newark to London, returning Paris to Newark) would cost 60k miles in economy.

Add in a stopover in Newark on the return, and a later one way trip to Jamaica and the price drops 2,500 miles to only 57,500 miles in economy!

 

Unfortunately, this deal I first wrote about last year dies in six weeks!

Mighty Travels interviewed me about miles, travel, and this blog. As usual, I went on and on and on and ... ;)

My favorite question and answer:

What is your biggest learning from earning so many miles and points?

The best use of miles is often to give them away.

In 2013, I traveled nine months outside the US to 20+ countries. And yet I had more miles than I could use.