I've been reading the posts from the previous thread to understand how booking for award points works. From what I seen on blogs about how to book, alot of them gloss over important details as if it's an easy book. They explain just a general guide but when I try to follow whatever small section they have to explaining how to find said award seats, I could never find any decent ones. They make sound too easy but never explain too much in finding said seat. Isn't that the hardest part? Pardon my ignorance but this is what I get on how to do it in a general sense

- You can search for the award flights via partner websites such as United, Air Canada and so forth. These were the ones I have been looking at.
- For the life of me cannot find any J class, let alone F for any non direct flights from LAX to TYO. I'm pretty sure this is a super in demand route so unless I book for a date way in advance, should I start looking at different airports?
- There is very limited availability on these seats and in all probability I won't be able to find something between now and Dec?
- I'm stuck with either a few UA flights but can't find any NH. Of course if you want to pay for a straight cash fare, those are plenty available.

Is there something I'm not understanding here or is this the gist of how you guys go about this?