Originally Posted by
oswaldjacoby
I will soon find myself in the same position, and not because I did not notice the expiration date. It seems the standard awards have been next to impossible to use. There have been flights where I have been able to purchase highly discounted tickets, yet not be able to use my standard award.
The difficulty using the awards seems to be border on a breech of trust. This is a different situation than award seats on other airlines--which may be frustrating, but your miles don't expire as long as you keep flying. These awards do expire--so the very limited availability renders them close to useless.
Which is exactly why I let my "seed" credit expire and didn't create one last standard award this spring. I already had to "waste" my remaining standard award on a trip which would have been somewhat fewer points than the 19200 points I used to create that standard award, because that was the only trip on which I could find standard award availability before it would expire, and I didn't want to risk holding out for a higher-value trip that might not be bookable at all.
But there are no more standard awards being issued, so whatever the problems them are, they'll soon be a thing of the past.