I still tear up over that too! But in all our cases we have no flexibility on when we are flying. My kids are still too unsettled in their jobs to know for sure that they'll be able to get holidays 9 - 11 months in advance. Besides, they have no money for hotels or transportation around Europe or Asia. So giving travel to them is also not an option except for the odd weekend here or there (we are taking our son to NYC with us in September and both kids will be with us SFO next month.)

My dh did a mileage run last year when he realized how close he was to SE in order to be able to use up our points this year.

Your reward was great. I haven't called in to AP yet but we have two big opportunities for travel this year - Trondheim, Norway in June and possibly South Africa in September. Neither are definite but at this time, for Oslo (AC won't take me Trondheim unless I call in so I couldn't use the 2 for 1 Olympic sale) the AP website shows no priority awards and nothing in J. We will call in once the trip is confirmed and see what we can do.

For South Africa, we will literally step off a cruise and have to fly on to South Africa and I must return by a specific date in order to attend a course. The dates for the meetings in South Africa are not set yet and if they fall during the cruise, we obviously won't be going. But the test booking I did last month, in J was around 260,000 points. I just did a test booking now and again, the website says no Priority awards and there are no flights available although if I go to Durban they'll fly me through JNB (which is my destination.) Only in Y except for the last leg to DUR but at J redemption level. Since I don't have dates, I haven't called in yet, but given how ridiculous the website is acting and how inflexible our dates are, I'm not optimistic. I do know that if I'm not flying in J, I'm not going. I'm friggin sick of flying and know my limits and flying YOW-LHR-JNB is so far over my limits it isn't worth talking about. Especially when the redemption is at the J point level.

I'm sure everyone here will say that I need to call in. Well, if the website is so bad, why do they even have a website. All it does is indicate that my points are worthless for travel.

Not knowing how many points I have is only part of the problem, not being able to use them is still an issue. And this will only get worse between now and 2013.