Well the partner availability story is really garbage.
AS's site is useful for finding some availability, but searching on it is impossible. You look for international business class and they force all of these mixed rewards into your search. You search LAX to CDG. That gives you a business flight to SFO and then coach to CDG. Exactly what you were looking for.
Also, plenty of their partners aren't available on the website. Do they tell you this? Of course not.
There are also phantom rewards that are available on the site. There's a nice first class flight LAX to SYD on Alaska on November 8th. There's likely been thousands of people trying to book this. It doesn't exist.
The Alaska program is good in theory, but the practical implication of it is that it needs a lot of improvement and there's NOBODY at AS who gives a sh*t enough to do anything about it.