It can be frustrating, to say the least!

Some of the tips in this thread, although it is about business class seats, can apply to coach travel as well: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ss-awards.html

Since your companion only has 60K miles, that makes finding a LOW coach seat a necessity. I would start with finding the transatlantic portion first. I wouldn't even search from where you are starting from to where you are going...Delta.com seems to have a problem kicking out itineraries with more than three segments on an award, even if the routing is valid.

I would start with searching the Delta gateways (ATL,DTW,MSP) to one of the cities you mentioned. Make notes on which routes on which dates/times have LOW availability for two (click through on the calendar to confirm, it frequently shows LOW when it's not actually available).

After you find the transatlantic availability in LOW, then search your departure city to XXX (where XXX is the city that the transatlantic flight departs from). Repeat until you find a day where there is availability in LOW on all the segments you need.

At this point, you have two choices:
1. Use multi-city to string together the segments you need (so instead of simply inputting LAX-CDG, for example, you might input LAX-ATL in the first box, ATL-CDG in the second). If you choose the exact flights that were coming up at LOW you *should* get a low pricing at the end.

2. Call. You'll pay $20 a ticket in ticketing fees. Be ready to feed the agent the exact flight dates & times that they need.

In addition, if you are having trouble finding the availability on the transatlantic segment, you can call to find out about partner availability (these won't necessarily show up online). Unfortunately it does not appear that they can search all partners at once nor is it a default option- you'll have to ask specifically for them to do so. There is also a limit on how many searches they will do in one call...so I would again ask them to start with the transatlantic segment (check the partner airlines online and where they have flights to/from first).