Award Redemptions - What Bugs You the Most?

We're doing a poll on Frequent Flyer program Award Redemptions.

Accumulating miles is relatively easy but some find it hard to book the trips they want.

Take the poll and help us see what the biggest issues are - and tell us more detail about your experiences in this thread.

It takes more work than it used to but every year for the last 10+ years, I have gotten round trip Biz Tix to London in Oct for either my wife and I or just myself at low miles on Delta and others. Another Biz Class on USAir trip was to Munich was for my ED back in 2004.

Bottom line, I can get to where I want when I want in Europe for low miles Biz Class either directly or by flying into a city and taking the train / LCC to the final destination. I may have to stay an extra day or two than i would prefer sometimes like this next trip to London but that's not really a sacrifice.

I have also been successful in using miles for upgrades when I wanted. But that's a pretty rare occasion since its a better value doing the Trans Atlantic trips.

Still have around 1000000+ miles left to spend in various accounts, DL, AA, AMEX. Shoud last me until I stop traveling for whatever's the reason.

Cheers

I hate when I find the long haul segment in my class of choice, but the short connection segment doesn't have availability, even in economy.

For example, I find space in First Class on BOS-LHR, but ORD-BOS has no award space.

I hate that the proliferation of frequent flyer programs spelled the end of space available travel for airline employees. I had to make a career change back in the 90s that I still regret.

I like AA fairly straightforward award redemption levels, was able to book the flight/class I wanted, however I was VERY surprised with the BA taxes ($700 taxes in BA vs $150 in AA, flying from LHR), I like it better than DL. For some reason every time I want to fly on my DL miles I have only availability on the high fare level (even trying to book 2/3 months in advance).

I like DL better as an airline (I'm DM with them), and their BusinessElite product is far superior than AA's business but unfortunately AA flies to the places I need to go overseas.