Originally Posted by ani90
Judging from what I see on this board using your miles will be more difficult than going through the eye of a needle. Unless one is flexible that is and willing to travel when and where CO wants you to go. For people who have heavy personal committments and work a tight non-flexible schedule then finding a suitable reward flight seems near impossible.
You can't take everything you read on the internet at face value. A frustrated poster who can't get 6 BF seats on a IAH-LGW flight on the Friday before Memorial day at Standard level may write up a rant, but that doesn't mean the miles are useless.
It's important to note that CO does not control its partners' inventory. Sure, CO is stingy at giving out seats, but they don't control AF, VS, KL, etc., and your OP miles are good on them.
If you want to redeem your miles on a specific flight on a specific date, and fly only on CO, yeah, they're harder to redeem than they could otherwise be.
But with reasonable flexibility (e.g., carrier, routing, dates, etc.) and an understanding of the partner networks and combinations of carriers you can use, they're much easier to use. Having redeemed over 1 million OP miles in the last 12 months, I can tell you that partners is the way to go.