Idiotic!

However, I suppose we should be grateful to the LA Times for diverting all those potential customers to CO (who won't even remember who to blame when they find it impossible to cash in miles for saver awards a few years down the road).

My ranking - based on 20 years of attempts to use miles to fly during holiday periods and/or to fly to hot destinations such as Europe, Hawaii, Vegas, etc. - not for easy domestic transcons like LAT reporter:

WN: A+ (no doubt will change this year!)
AA: A
UA: A-
DL: B
CO: D+
US: F
(no experience with NW or AW)

US was absolutely the worst, no flights from SFO on any date in August 2004. Basically zero inventory for those of us who live here. CO is almost as bad though I did once find space (in C no less!) from SFO-LIM (alas ultimately redeposited). AA was the only airline that could find me transcon space during the holiday period spanning the millenium celebration (i.e. 1/1/2000).

Overall I suppose it is nice that CO offers a great search engine that let you quickly determine that there is no saver inventory for your intended itinerary. Vs. United where I will normally get directed to incompetent Indian outsource (or perhaps not as I can't imagine these people have been trained to handle partner award travel).