A big complaint The Traveling Professor always hears is that it can be very difficult to redeem accrued award miles for flights. I agree that airlines do conspire for us to redeem those awards. For instance, when traveling from North America to Europe, American Airlines seems to want to route you through London as much as they can. I feel the reason for this is because taxes and fees going through London are so high, it discourages people from redeeming miles when a purchased ticket does not cost a significant amount more. And of course, the big problem is that flights are simply not available. However, I have discovered a tool on American Airline's site that makes it easier (not necessarily easy) to find award flights.