KellyNYC

You really have to work the ff system to get what YOU WANT out of it. But it can be done. I myself am one of those freaks that gets up at 7am to call the first day a flight to europe is able to be booked with miles. But it does pay off if you persist and get the hang of the ways to do it. That 7am 330 day out call got me on the flights I wanted on USAir in business to Rome in August - Rome being their most popular destination and August, well....

And now this winter AA offered a fly 2 times NYC to FLA by April 15 and get a free ticket anywhere they fly. I jumped on it and now am flying to Paris in August along with two friends that also did this. We called AA the day the vouchers arrived in the mail.

So I can testify you can use your miles. You just have to play by their rules and call the day your desired flight is available. And you can always hang up and call back to get another operator. I have found that sometimes works too. Some operators will go that extra mile to find a route that will work for you.

gail

Article this week in Wall Street Journal (sorry, don't know exact date) about how tough it is to use FF miles - referenced AA, but noted that same applies to most major airlines.

In case you can't get a hold of the article, it made several main points. First, stated outright that it is close to impossible to get flights to/from certain desirable spots and/or at certain times/dates. For example, northeast to Orlando in winter - forget it. Second, even though 330 day rule applies, there are many flights that have ZERO seats available for FF redemption EVER, even if flight is totally empty at that time one tries to book.

Article also spent some time discussing that there are not restrictions if one can use higher mileage amounts (for example 50,000 miles for domestic). AA denied in article that this was ploy to get people to use more miles or a preview of higher mileage requirements to come. On the bright side, as people have stated here, article did state that seats do open up closer to date as airline computer wizards predict which flights will have empty un-sellable seats.

MightyIsis

Dittos to CarolA regarding flying AA out of Nashville. They really seem to have it in for this city, which was once one of their hubs before they pulled out of here. A nice agent told me they left us to buy up all of Eastern's old Miami slots. We get Frontier in June and I email JetBlue every once in a while lobbying for them to come here.

CarolA

I actually complained once to an AA manager in Nashville.

His "excuse" was that the employees were upset since lots of them had lost jobs etc. due to the "cutbacks" in Nashville. I pointed out that driving off the remaining passengers was NOT really helpful for job security! The manager did apologize and make things right, but only after telling me the agent who had cussed at me was one of his best! (I had witnesses, so he had to admit I was right)