Ok, I know I'm up against the OnePass program's famous inavailability, but I'm still a little young and a lot naive, so bear with me.

I'm trying to book a reward ticket from OAK-UIO (SFO-UIO would be fine too) for the weekend of March 10. Ideally, I'd like to leave that Thursday (3/8) and return on Monday 3/12. I can be flexible +/- a day. On Wed 3/7, there is standard award availability (17,500 miles) for OAK-UIO (and SFO-UIO and IAH-UIO). Not so for Thursday, but fine. I can live with a 3/7 departure.

The return is the issue. Between now and the end of April, there are 3 days (total!) with standard award availability for the return leg. This goes for UIO-OAK, UIO-SFO, UIO-IAH (just for reference-- I wondered if IAH-OAK was the bottleneck, but it appears not). Those days are 4/19, 4/24, 4/25. All of my data here regards economy class. There is absolutely no standard award First/BFirst availability through April (as far as I checked).

So, what gives here? Does CO just give literally NO standard award availability on these flights? Or do they give just 1 or 2 seats and those seats are gone for every UIO-IAH flight for the next 4+ months?

The real question important to me is, of course, should I book this ticket ASAP, so at least I can pay the standard rate for the outbound leg? Or should I wait a while because there is a reasonable chance that some standard award availability will open up on the return flights as their day approaches? How long would I be advised to wait in that case?

I'd sure like to avoid the SleazyPass rate altogether (for 52,500 miles, I should be going to Brazil, not Ecuador!), but I definitely don't want to end up paying 70k miles because I waited too long.

Thoughts? Advice? Can anyone shed some light on the overall scenario?

Thanks in advance!