The question becomes when do you know that the only awards available (in general) are SkyChoice (or equivelent). In my scenario, if you call up and no Saver awards are available, is that because they are all already taken, or there weren't that many (if any) to begin with)?

When they offer SkyChoice availability, are they really doing a favor (by letting me get onto a 'full' flight) by 'only' charging me double the normal miles, or are they basically forcing me to spend 2x miles if I want to use FF miles to fly. I'm not sure we'd ever know.

In any case, from a management perspective, it certainly seems better to play with the availability on the back side than to have an obvious increase of the miles required on the front.

My hope is that we are all just theorizing too much and/or being a little paranoid.

Jeff