Originally Posted by channa

Break it up a bit. If they say they can't get you LAX-BOM, ask them if they have LAX-KL-AMS or LAX-AF-CDG and find out what your problem segment(s) are. Then try to find a way to work around it. It's possible they have CDG-BOM, but nothing from LAX-CDG. But they may have SNA-IAH-CDG, who knows.

I have used many CO miles all at the standard level for biz class travel. Sometimes you have to spoonfeed ideas to the agent (e.g., not "please check every partner" but "did you check Delta? Air France? Alaska?").

Think also of the obscure partners that they may forget. I recently was looking for C class back from NRT on NW (outbound was fine), and they didn't have NRT-SFO on or around my date, but they did have NRT-PDX, so I booked NRT-NW-PDX-AS-OAK. The response I got was "Oh, good idea. I didn't know Alaska flew that route."

So think of some of the unusual routes, airlines, or alternate airports, etc. that you can. Often the results you get is dependent on the agent's ability to search and be creative.