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You do need to put a bit of work in for some flights; I was up until 2am in Zurich last year to book the return portion of a London-Male trip on the phone - using the voucher saved over £3k. I recently booked flights to America next year using the voucher which saved about £2k overall. Could definitely save more money if I'd picked other flights but America was our plan!

I get that it can sometimes be very frustrating but the nature of the rewards does sometimes make it difficult to book the most premium routes, particularly in the high tourist season or around school holidays. That doesn't mean that BA/Amex have made it impossible to use; you can't expect BA to continue as a going concern if they let dozens of people book reward seats on every flight. There are plenty of tips on here (and, dare I say it, on other websites too) - a bit of research can go a long way.