I have never had trouble booking reward tickets. Maybe I am in the minority, but June 1 this year, I booked two Standard BF tickets to HNL for late September, with a stopover (CLE-EWR-HNL-LAX then SAN-CLE). While I am "Elite", it is only Silver, so I don't know if that helped very much. I couldn't book online because of the stopover, but when I called, the CSR bent over backwards to make the trip work. I was able to get the exact dates, and even flights I wanted. (we are celebrating two events also)