There are tricks to using the CO miles. Your two obstacles are that 1) the website doesn't display all options, partners, and partner combinations; and 2) CO's agents are not well trained in this department. We usually find that if you do a bit of legwork, the miles can be used.

When we see posts like yours, either the poster A) needs help redeeming miles; or B) simply wants to b*tch about it.

If you want help for a specific purpose, please post your parameters and what you tried, and people will share their suggestions.

I'll share my recent redemption example:

I wanted to travel SFO-ICN-KIX, KIX-ICN, ICN-SFO for 2 in business class on KE. Clearly this is not something the website can do, so I called.

First agent tells me nothing is available on any of my days. I start asking her to check out of LAX instead (presuming that if she found that, I would have her add SFO-LAX on AS), nothing. I toss out YVR-ICN, she says nothing. I suggest NW HNL-KIX, nothing. I start asking for multiple day searches (around my date), and she's now getting frustrated at my persistence, so I give up.

I hit redial, and second agent says the same thing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I then ask her to check +/- 5 days of my travel date SFO-ICN, LAX-ICN, and YVR-ICN. So that's 11 days, 4 flights per day (there are 2 from LAX), a total of 44 flights, and at this point, i say any class of service, including economy. Mind you, this is now over 15,000 seats, and she checks each flight, each day, and tells me not one is available.

When she's done I say I cannot believe not a single seat out of 15,000, in any class of service is available for this trip (which was > 6 months out). Something must be wrong. She puts me on hold, looks up some notes, and comes back saying she was doing it wrong (and clearly so was the first agent).

We go back to my original request, SFO-ICN-KIX, KIX-ICN, ICN-SFO and look at those preferred flights on my preferred dates, and she books them all in business class. All flights come back confirmed from KE before we end the call, and I'm good to go.

I'm not saying getting a ticket should be like this, but it goes to show that even when it appears that there's nothing available, there could very well be some decent stuff out there.