I have noticed that at certain times, saver awards are very difficult to reserve, especially for a family of 4. Certain locations (not prime vacation destinations either) are almost impossible to get saver awards, even 4 to 6 months out. However, other markets are easy to get saver awards. I know that the award bucket is reduced and shared by all airlines in a code share so the number of awards on any given flight is greatly reduced. This is certainly true when considering the numbers of frequent flyers members (both flyers and credit card users) today than 5 years ago.