Last week I spent a lot of time researching and eventually booking flights for this year’s trip to Europe. This will be our first visit outside the peak summer travel season I expected to have my pick of plentiful award flight and hotel options. I was partially right: there were far more choices than I typically find during the summer. I was miserably wrong, however, when I searched American Airlines in hopes of using my stash of American AAdvantage miles. But I found no saver-level business class space for the days we are traveling. For me, this was the last straw.