My dad had a corporate Amex card with 1 million Membership Rewards points for a business he closed upon retirement. He needed to transfer the miles out, and because he and my mother had ideas that they would be traveling from their home in the USA to Asia and South America (and could use AM on AA and LATAM to get there) he decided to dump them all into Asia Miles. Fast forward a few years and the miles are all due to expire at the end of this month, and health problems made it impossible to make the trips that they had planned. Health permitting, they are hoping to make a trip to Rio de Janeiro roughly around New Years, and would also like to make a trip to Hong Kong and maybe Tel Aviv in the next year.

My father is not particularly technically inclined, and his experiences speaking to AM agents has not been very good, with very long waits around an hour, and unhelpful/knowledgeable staff, and they have not found useable inventory even going 365 days out. With the miles about to disappear in two weeks, I'm now trying to help salvage something out of the miles. I've been frustrated by the fact that I don't seem to be able to search for AA or LATAM seats on the Asia Miles site (is that right? If so are there any other sites that can tell me about inventory on AA/LATAM available to AM?) and the interminable waits to speak to telephone agents.

Given the short time, and the seeming unavailability of useable inventory at the moment, I'm wondering if it's possible to simply issue awards before the expiration, and hope to later find dates to convert into ticketed itineraries within the next year? If this is not possible, is it at least possible to find unusable dates or itineraries (for example I've found seats to SCL, but not GIG) and hope to switch these to GIG if and when seats become available on these routes? Or will these itineraries not be able to be changed (and because the miles will be expired can't be refunded)?

Or does anybody have any other ideas for how to make the best of this situation? I've checked into extending the miles, but at $.02/mile that makes no economic sense.

Thanks in advance for any pointers?