AC's lousy reward seat availability remains a huge problem IMO. A basic member of NW, AA, DL etc gets better reward seat availability (by spending additional points) than an AC Elite.

I heard rumblings that there may be some improvements in Q2 2005 - possibly an extension of the Avenue rewards to the front cabin. However, with AC at such high loads, and Rupert focused on toasters, its hard to imagine that there are going to be too many improvements.