So I was having difficulty getting the lax-ewr leg of a lax-tlv flight this summer with aa and after seeking help here on the forums, I ended up with a major breakthrough by accident. The awards agent mentioned the possibility of putting in a request for a seat which I only realized later what she meant. Apparently, (at least for an aa flight) if there are no award seats available on the flight you want, they can submit a request for the airline to make a regular $ seat into an award seat. I don't know if this works far in advance - I was doing it a day or two before. So my brother told the agent to put in the request (he called from LA when I was sleeping here) and when he woke up he had the flight he wanted.