I fly continental. Go to their website. Contintental.com, Up at the top gray tab area Travel Center > Reservations> Reward Travel> put your city pairs in and dates you want to travel and number of passengers. Flight details will come up with a calendar. It will show you availibility for two months. Usually 25000 mile reward rquires sat stay roundtrip travel and is for domestic flights. Anything over the water is going to be more. In any event the calendar will show you when those types of rewards are available. If you are not traveling with a sat stay the reward jumps to 50000, again this is domestic.
Amex usually takes 72hours to transfer but for a small fee you can now do that on Continental.com and the transfer will be immediate. If you have a problem call their web help desk the number is on the web.

Pananna