I prefer redeeming my international travel on *A partners on their C and F. Last year I booked two separate RT's in C from LAX to HEL using SK, LH, and NZ.

For my friend I booked Y RT to Shanghai on United due to the fact that he might have to change the return date.

I also booked two open jaws on RG GIG-FOR and SSA-GIG and one RT GIG-SSA-GIG.

These European runs I booked on a last minute and really did not have hard time getting my seat on the flights I wanted. I wanted to check the LH’s and SK’s product and well as the NZ’s flight LHR-LAX.

Quite a few people complain that they are not able to book their awards months in advance. I don’t mind booking my trips the previous day if needed.

Sometimes it helps to do these bookings at the foreign CTO’s where agents can (or maybe shouldn’t) sell the award class and see if it comes back as confirmed (HK) or unable to confirm (UC). The phone agents are more hesitant to use this tactic.

Also I booked RTW on *A in C from United's DC Promo. My route was SNA(UA)-DENx(UA)-IADx(UAD)-EZE-GRU(LH)-GIG(RG)-SSA(RG)-LIS(TP)-BCN(SP)-FRAx(LH)-IST(LH)-DXB(SQ)-SIN(SQ)-HKG(SQ)-ICN(OZ)-SYD(OZ)-AKL(NZ)-TBU(NZ)-LAX(NZ)

Then I had two sides trips using CC (coupon connection) IST-BEY-IST on MEA Y and SIN-BKK-SIN on SQ F

I did use, however, around 10 hours of my time booking the ATW and it did help that I had all the *A route maps open on various browsers to make suggestions where to check the availability.

This year I plan burning around 450K United miles on C and F travel on *A.