This thread is an perfect example of how the misconception/experience of some people plays into the thoughts of many ( mostly those with limited knowledge or " urban legend experience" ) about FF programs.
No disrespect to the OP but expecting to get awards tickets to a popular
destination such LAS in the middle of the Summer holidays at such a short window (just about two weeks from today and a weekend to boot) is almost as difficult as trying to get awards a few days before Thanskgiving or Xmas.
One just has to plan better.
That said I am pretty sure plenty of awards are available to places such as SAN or LAX or even PHX and might require a purchasing a ticket to Vegas for under $100.00

OTOH I know of NO MAJOR rental car company which does not allow drop off or prohibits driving from CA to NV. Many such as National and Alamo have no drop off charges.
mike

Edited to add;
Do you have any AA miles?
I just went AA.com and found a number of flights available to LAS on 6/23 from LGA, plus one only on 6/24.
Returning 4 or so flights on 6/26
(nothing 6/27)
ALL with at least TWO awards seats.

Crazy Routing
 

Last year, about 6 months before I wanted to go to Vegas I could find nothing on Co, NW, or DL, so I Flew United. My routing was...

MLI-Ord-Den-Palm Springs-Las

The return

LAS-ORD-Den-MLI

If only I was getting miles!! (no miles on a free ticket)

If you know anyone who has AA FF miles they might be able to trade with you the following is available on AA:

AMERICAN EAGLE
5021 LGA New York 06/24/2004 05:00 PM BOS Boston 06/24/2004 06:10 PM AMERICAN AIRLINES
469 BOS Boston 06/24/2004 07:45 PM LAS Las Vegas 06/24/2004 10:19 PM

AMERICAN AIRLINES
1036 LAS Las Vegas 06/27/2004 09:45 PM BOS Boston 06/28/2004 05:40 AMERICAN EAGLE
5004 BOS Boston 06/28/2004 07:00 AM LGA New York 06/28/2004 08:15 AM

Out of the country, yes. Out of the state is something that I have never seen in my heavy volume of car rentals. But if they do, expect them to be possible able to enforce it with the use of a GPS.

Welcome to AA's new knife in the back program "initiative" - Milesaaver.

Read the threads regarding what Milesaaver means to you, especially with respect to domestic 25K "base-level" awards...and you'll know what's up AND why you can't find seats to Vegas, Orlando, and numerous other travel destinations.

MikeSil, FWIW, I have used aadvantage awards for years to Las Vegas, and to numerous other domestic US cities....some booked well ahead (months), while some booked days ahead.....for years and years. Often with my entire family, occasionally just myself. You keep trying to make it seem as if *everyone else* is wrong to even think they should have a right to be able to reserve a domestic 25K award....and that the "expectation" should not be so. You couldn't be more wrong...until 2004. Now, by default, and through no ingenious discovery on your part, your assertion(s) are technically correct. All over the AA thread we see substantial docuimentation of what Milesaaver is, what is has done, and what it will likely do to adversely impact the domestic 25K award traveler going forward, so its no great secret any longer what AA has done to their base-level travelers trying to find a "planaahead" award seat.

Lets call a spade a spade, ok ? Milesaaver, a newly-implemented initiative to replace the award formerly known as the PLANAAHEAD, is a severe capacity controlling scheme which will make domestic 25K awards less and less available until, and IF THEN, last minute when AA's computer sense the seat(s) won't get sold and they [AA] begrudgingly dole out the 25K award seats to last minute flyers. Since I don't know many people who will let their vacation plans rest on a 5-day notice award seat...in effect, AA has just introduced a highly-effective capacity control on their base level domestic 25K seat. What is the effect on me and my discretionary travel ? Has driven me to orbitz.com and travelocity.com and completely, thoroughly, trashed my loyalty to AA. Why bother ?

Milesaaver represents a 100% overhaul of the AAdvantage approach to making domestic 25K seats/awards available from over a decade of flying and miles accumulation I've been a part of.

In response, I have now also diverted easily over $350K of charges in last 2.5-3 months from my Citibank/Aadvantage card...to competing card products. Why accumulate now mostly-worthless AAdvantage miles if one can't use them ? As word gets out of this AA scheme, ie people throughout the summer find they cannot book basic domestic 25K awards to destinations they wish to travel...I suspect the vaunted AAdvantage program will begin to see interesting anomolies in accrual patterns.

I do realize that my desired weekend for my trip to Vegas is less than three weeks away. And I realize that the lack of available flights could be because of this short notice. But I also checked for later in the year, just for kicks. There is not a single Thursday, Friday or Saturday flight in the entire months of November or December available! That should be plenty of notice, and it's certainly not the summer season!

Yeah, I'm sure Vegas is tough to get a ticket to. But since I am willing to fly out of EWR, LGA, JFK or PHL (or even fly EWR-LAX), I was hoping I could find ONE ticket for a Thu, Fri or Sat on one of the 5 airlines that I can use my miles on. I've used miles to go to both Hawaii and San Francisco within the last couple years, so I've had good expereiences before. But now I've still got all these miles, and it is rather frustrating that they are so difficult to use. I guess I just have to give up the idea of going to Vegas and use them for going somewhere else.

I like the Los Angeles - LAS drive, especially in the summer. The heat is so crazy, like nothing you experience "back home". The scenery is also terrific, the mountains in CA, the Joshua trees, and vast emptiness of the desert on the Nevada border.

I've done a couple open jaw one way rentals from SNA and LAX to get around yield management. I also had one thrust upon me. Focus on ONT, SNA, LAX, BUR in that order (closest to furthest away). Usually the rental car companies don't levy a drop charge on one way rentals to LAS, make sure you shop around.

Before you leave the lot, check your A/C! :) If you decide to drive back to California, gas up in Vegas before you leave. The gas prices in Baker are amoung the highest in the country. http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_ho.../24029173.html

i usually just buy my ticket to vegas
 

since I can usually get a cheap flight.
I have flown to la and Driven twice since my brother lives there.
It is ok but it is much better to just fly to Vegas.

peace
wwonka

ILLUVCITIBANK:

I did not say the OP was wrong in attempting/expecting to get award tickets for whatever date he desires, what I was trying to suggest that one has to be aware of the likely availability to certain popular destinations and work accordingly with the hand dealt.

You apparently have some sort of beef with AAdvantage and despite numerous posts by other Ftalkers on others threads such as “ AA Morphing into OnePass” disputing or refuting your conclusions, you have continued along the same lines - your choice, fine.

But just take this thread, the OP says he is unable to get award tickets on CO/DL/NWA and has be trying for sometime.
Although personally I cannot think of the circumstances when I would ever redeem an award to LAS, these fares being always generally fairly inexpensive ( as one who goes to LAS 3 or 4 times a year I cannot ever recall having paid over $250 from TPA, in fact I will be departing LAS the morning of 6/23)
There appears to be quite a good availability to LAS on AA, for STANDARD AWARDS as I and others have posted from EWR, BOS, LGA, BWI, TPA, MIA among the cities I have checked, all for outbound 6/23 and 6/24, return some on 6/26, all on 6/28
Sort of destroys your argument vis-vie CO/AA doesn’t it?
mike

I had an appointment with my physician last week. He flies to Vegas 4 or 5 times a year. He says he can never get tickets on US with miles, but he easily can get tickets to LAX. He says that Southwest flies almost hourly from a gate just across from his arrival gate and the fare is quite low. I haven't looked it up, but he claims that is the only way he goes these days.

Can you leave Wednesday evening and come back Saturday? I just checked on Alaska and they show seats available on American (for 25,000) miles for the following:

American 1575
Operated by American Airlines Newark-Newark Intl.
6:18 pm (Wed, Jun 23) Dallas-Ft. Worth
9:06 pm Wed, Jun 23 Coach, Nonstop

American 1427
Operated by American Airlines Dallas-Ft. Worth
9:45 pm (Wed, Jun 23) Las Vegas
10:25 pm Wed, Jun 23 Coach, Nonstop

American 1059
Operated by American Airlines Las Vegas
12 noon (Sat, Jun 26) Los Angeles
1:06 pm Sat, Jun 26 Coach, Nonstop

American 242
Operated by American Airlines Los Angeles
2:00 pm (Sat, Jun 26) New York-Kennedy
10:30 pm Sat, Jun 26 Coach, Nonstop

There are other choices through Chicago. Not bad for a 25,000 mile award 3 weeks away, if you have a little flexibility.

Not even necessary. In my above post, I listed AA flights available on his prefered dates. If he can find someone with AA miles who can help him out he is set.

I can't speak for the other airlines, but AA does a good job with award availability. ILUVCITIBANK likes to ignore the facts and continue his campain agianst AAdvantage MileSaver awards. Interesting how he didn't address the fact I listed available MileSaver seats 2 posts before his - but ranted away how nothing is ever available.

ILUVCITIBANK - Seats are not always available - but to expect otherwise is unreasonable. In general, AA and AS have the best domestic award availability. Seats are not made available as far in advance now on some routes as before - learn the system and work with it. I and others are getting tired of hearing your rants that run contrary to our recent experiences with MileSaver awards.

(And don't give me your speel about how I'm EXP so have more inventory - when I check AA.com logged in as my dad with no status AA still has decent availability.)

In February, I booked a First Class ticket to Las Vegas, RT from Washington D.C., with a stopover in Charlotte (both directions) for this coming July 4th weekend, on USAir for 50,000 miles. No problem at all; had my choice of several flights. As I recall, availability in coach using the "standard" (non premium) award was also pretty good at that time. Of course, by booking in advance on USAir you are gambling on its long-term survival...

Have you tried return on Jun 26 (or other Saturday returns on those other summer weekend checks)? I realize that's cutting it shorter, but the thing is Fri to Vegas and Sun from Vegas are the hardest days to get DISCOUNT flights, let alone restricted award flights.

And forget the driving thing from the L A area, the thing is that there is only one road to/from Vegas much of the way (if you don't want to go WAY out of the way), and everyone is on it on those weekend drives, and so it takes many more hours than the mileage would seem to indicate.

If it weren't for the Sunday return, you might be able to book a $76ish total round trip air ticket on Southwest or another airline competing with Southwest LAX-LAS-LAX. But again, those deep discount fares are typically eaten up immediately long in advance for Sunday returns.

Btw, speaking of Southwest: If you had a Southwest award, I doubt you'd have much trouble getting a free flight from PHL, because Southwest awards, unlike the 25k mile awards from the major airlines, are totally unrestricted (except for a handful of blackout dates a year): If there is ONE LAST SEAT left on the plane, you can get on with a Southwest award.

Meanwhile, do UA or DL have "unrestricted" awards for 50k? You should be able to get those, I would think. 25k are not the "standard" awards like the hype might make you think, they're "discount" and "restricted" awards, the 50k ones are the really "standard" ones. (Even though everyone wishes they never have to use anything but the 25k ones. :) ) So if that's the case, it's not that you can't use miles to get to Las Vegas, you just can't use DISCOUNT miles. (For many airlines, those 50k domestic coach awards are very similar to the "last seat" Southwest awards.)

Well, just to let you all know, I was finally able to get a flight on USAir for the weekend I wanted for 25k miles! These flights were available now, but weren't available the last time I checked 24 hours ago.

I will leave EWR at 5:35am (ouch!) on Fri Jun 25 and go to Vegas thru Charlotte. On the way back on Mon Jun 28, I leave LAS at 1:00pm and return to EWR thru Philly. That 5:35 flight is a little early, but it does help me avoid nasty north Jersey traffic, and it will get me to Vegas early enough to spend most of the day there.

So I guess this proves that it is possible to use miles to get a standard award ticket to Vegas for a summer weekend, as long as you are patient enough to check the airlines' websites every day...