So, just a quick success story on transferring Amex points to Etihad to redeem award flights on Royal Air Maroc, and a quick solution to getting availability to show when contacting Etihad agents to book the flight.

First, I created a Safar Flyer account, and determined there was J award availability on my selected dates (doesn't guarantee the same availability will be accessible to Etihad, but it's a good start). Then, I contacted Etihad to confirm the availability, transfer my miles from Amex (posted instantly), and book the tickets.

Now the first few times I tried to do this, the Etihad agent would create a "dummy booking" to check for the award space first, and each time they informed me that the seats were not confirmed, i.e., that there was no award space available. Based on a few other data points, I asked the agent to try again. but this time with all of the details for my partner and I (i.e. not a dummy booking, but an attempted booking with all of the fields filled properly/with real information). Suddenly, the tickets were confirmed, the award space was open, and I redeemed my miles. Voila! JFK to CMN in J for 176000 Amex points round trip for 2. After $400 per person round trip taxes and fees, I'm getting >5 cents pp for the miles at today's ticket prices (almost 10k for J.. not that I would pay that out of pocket, but still!)

So, just to reiterate: if dummy bookings aren't being confirmed/showing availability on RAM by Etihad, try again with your proper info! Based on my experience, and the experience of a few others, this may fix the problem outright.