Actually I just redeemed recently and its even easier. A few months ago AI moved to an internet based redemption feature. Choose your flights, date and number of seats and as long as you have enough miles for redemption and there are open seats on the flight the redemption is possible. No limits imposed on available award seats like most other airlines. Payment of taxes can be done online using a credit card so the process took all of 20 minutes for me. Its a far cry from having to take your award form and passport to a ticket office and have it issued manually.