Bear in mind also that redemption demand is heaviest to the same subset of places (Hawaii, Florida, Europe in summer, etc.) So you've got an imbalance there as well as the well-known huge imbalance between unredeemed miles and seats available.

You've also got a trend where cuts fall hardest on routes favored by leisure travelers and legacy carriers really cut service to places like LAS and MCO because of not enough business travelers. The business routes take the lightest cuts but aren't necessarily the ones favored for award redemptions.

Seems like everyone is trying to add capacity to China, so if you just happened to want to go there you might not come out too badly.

As usual, lack of transparency also doesn't help.