Unsure what exactly you mean by your SQ comment, and by "them" if you mean SQ staff or other. SQ does not release that much I/O inventory to the rest of *A either way. Its possible to find it, but definitely not as generous as others. They do have a lot of space for their own Krisflyer members, I believe

All calls were in English. For the most part, the agents English is good enough to do the job. Its their training or knowledge of the tools that are lacking. A couple of things might have gotten lost in translation, so I just worded it differently. There was NO confusion/language barrier when they were saying "no O availability" imo. It was said by all 3 agents, they were all incorrect, and not a language issue. Spanish may indeed help for a few keywords

I would hope that the CopaAir site shows all correct CM inventory (when logged in). Since EF/UA etc will only show what CM release to *A, it obv won't show the additional awards/options that are bookable by prefer members. There is no way to waitlist on CM (at least not as of last year), so it would be redic if one has to phone up everyday to make sure that PTY-XYZ still has no I inventory, as is displayed on the site

One thing that bugs me, and I am unsure if its a language thing or not, but when I was booking the PTY-YVR trip, 2 agents kept on saying something along the lines of "no I don't see that on the site". I pulled them up on that each time, saying that please do not check the copaair website, I can do that myself and to please use your own tools. They both continually referred to whatever they were looking at (SHARES presumably) as "the site"

I also had an agent on that PTY-YVR call, again in the redemption department, state that if I wanted to book on UA or AC metal, I would have to call those airlines to book. I was thinking ... is this and just HUCA. That was one of the "skill testing" comments right there. How she thought I would be able to fly to YVR without non CM metal was beyond me

These agents, afaik, are actually trained on the redemption tools and are part of a special team to deal with award bookings. They are not just run of the mill phone staff trying to look routes up. There was one very good guy that I talked to a few months back, who was able to quickly look up whatever I wanted and he explained some info about what they can see (if they are not great at using their tools) as well as why the website is so bad, and that everything they have to do is manual. He was the one who processed the payment for my PTY-LAX-YVR booking. I specifically asked for him when trying to book from TYO, and was told by 1 agent that he was not in, and when I asked another agent it sounded like he no longer works there - that part might have been a language issue/misunderstanding. Shame

One thing on HUCA. On the TYO attempts, I actually had 8-10 calls in total. I got through to Agent 1 multiple times, before another person picked up on the next call. The department is not that big, especially if you are narrowing it to English specific agents