While it is true that many do redeem miles for reward tickets (I redeemed 145,000 miles last year), the fact remains that most people find it difficult to redeem their miles for flights of their choice. This is a well recognized phenomena and airlines are releasing fewer and fewer seats for reward travel. Indeed CO had amongst the lowest proportion of seats released for reward travel of the legacy airlines. Also remember CO is selling more and more seats so have less seats to give away "for free".

While it is true there are ways round the "Nonepass" phenomena, remember that the only reason you are so successful in redeeeming miles is because 10 others are not. The number of reward seats is finite - if we could all obtain the seats as easily as seasoned award gurus, then even you will struggle to get a reward as is the case for upgrades (where there is a finite number and where rules are simple and transparent, requiring little ingenuity of the FF to execute). Your success in redeeming miles is not a reflection of an abundance of reward seats on CO; what you experience is the allocation of the few available seats, to the few who know their way around.