US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - 20000 or 25000 award travel

am I just picking the wrong days, or did us airways restriction the redemption travel days to just tuesdays and wednesdays for canada/US basic travel award.
It seems like, they are deliberately making use 40000 pts to book a ticket.
The 20000/25000 award is virtually impossible to use.
No one wants to travel wed-tues.

I've never had a problem using the standard awards (or the 20,000 mile ones now known as "usairways.com awards" since they can only be booked online for the off-peak travel) for weekends.....but it does take some planning in advance sometimes for very popular destinations. The only times I've used 40,000 miles is once for a first-class standard award and once for a premium award to follow my team to the Rose Bowl (blackout dates circumvented, and I got a ticket that would have cost $950 if I had paid for it).

I've been searching for a toronto- las vegas flight for this coming winter.
I'm looking between oct and feb. With only tues and wed flights available.
I get X's everywhere else.
I started looking in March to give me lots of lead time. Everything through pittsburgh, philly and charlotte forces me to flight out on wed and comeback on tues.
I'm having massive problems using my usairways points.
I've had better success using AA points or aeroplan in the past.
Ideally, I want to leave thursday morning and comeback sunday afternoon.
But, I'll take anything close. But, to go for a whole week is out of the question. Also, wed. to tues. trips burn too many vacation days.

I've been searching for a toronto- las vegas flight for this coming winter.
I'm looking between oct and feb. With only tues and wed flights available.
I get X's everywhere else.
I started looking in March to give me lots of lead time. Everything through pittsburgh, philly and charlotte forces me to flight out on wed and comeback on tues.
I'm having massive problems using my usairways points.
I've had better success using AA points or aeroplan in the past.
Ideally, I want to leave thursday morning and comeback sunday afternoon.
But, I'll take anything close. But, to go for a whole week is out of the question. Also, wed. to tues. trips burn too many vacation days.

Vegas is usually difficult to score award tickets to since it's a popular award destination (more people competing for the award seats). However, I've been to Vegas a few times, and have never paid more than $230 from DC. With so much advance planning, I'm sure you'll be able to find something reasonable.

there is a good reason why I want to use points.
An air ticket to vegas from toronto is about $400 CAD.
However, with taxes, it comes close to $600.

Air taxes in Canada are ridiculous, Especially out of Toronto.
However, if I use points, my taxes are only about $40-60.

Much of the taxes are a %. so 7% (our GST for example) of $0.00 ticket is $0.
There are so many gov't taxes, airport surcharges here, your head would spin.
BTW, some of the taxes only apply to north american flights.

I'll buy international tickets.
Taxes on those only amount to about $100 or so.