United updated its award chart effective February 3, 2014 with a number of bad changes. It essentially gutted the redemption amounts for business and first class partner awards (i.e. the cost of a First Class flight from the U.S. to Europe in Lufthansa First increased by 85,000 miles, from 135,000 to 220,000 miles). From that point of view, the economy award chart looked relatively unscathed albeit almost all of the changes were negative. Here’s a quick recap of the ECONOMY CLASS updates:

• U.S. –> Hawaii: A 5,000 mile increase from 40k miles to 45k miles
• U.S. –> Middle East (Egypt, Israel, UAE etc…): A 5,000 mile increase from 80k miles to 85k miles
• U.S. –> Central Asia (India, Maldives, Nepal etc…): A 5,000 mile increase from 80k miles to 85k miles
• U.S. –> South Asia (Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam etc…): A 15,000 mile increase from 65k miles to 80k miles
• U.S. –> North Asia (China, South Korea etc…): A 5,000 mile increase from 65k miles to 70k miles
• U.S. –> Japan: A 5,000 mile increase from 65k miles to 70k miles

With the new award prices in mind, I’ve prepared a handy map to see where in the world “X” number of United MileagePlus Award Miles will take you. This should help a lot in visualizing where in the world you can travel to with those miles you’ve been saving up over the years. You’ll find a few sweet spots that might help you save a few thousand MP Award Miles here or there, too, such as:

• North America to Turkey is 60k miles, however, to travel to nearby Israel or Egypt will cost you 85k — so maybe explore the possibility of booking award travel to Turkey and then purchasing a cheap ticket to your final destination
• North America to India/Nepal will cost you 85k miles but neighboring China will only cost you 70k — book your trip to a country in the 70k zone with a “stopover” in India and save the 15k miles per person.