Get Awards Early and use them
I am one of the lucky ones who can use the awards. I am using them for Hawaii from Chicago. The booking class is XY no matter what your status is. Also, it takes the entire six weeks to get them. They were sending them faster, but as of December they are mailing them out four weeks after request is made. What is hard is that you must get the coupon, yes this is a paper based coupon, to the airline in 24 hours. It can be post marked, but if the certificate gets lost, you are SOL.
Good luck!