There's a far greater allocation of Miles + Money fares than other types of reward flight, so you stand a much better chance of securing those. M+M are available for most dates and routes but, as Netty says, they're not always much cheaper than the regular discounted fares. On a number of occasions we've been able to get PE M+M for as little as £550, but we're having to pay £728 in November (which is £100 less than the discounted PE fare). There were no Companion or Upgrade fares available and we were able to be very flexible with our dates (we just wanted to be there for the IF&WF, so we had a 2 month window). For our trip last August, there were a lot of gaps in M+M availability, so you can't guarantee you will always get a M+M fare, particularly if you have little or no flexibility with dates.
Full Reward, Companion and Upgrade flights all fall into the same fare code. On some of the busier routes and dates they don't allocate any at all (this is frequently the case for Orlando). When they do, there are often only two such codes in PE and two in UC. So, for example, if I book a Companion flight in PE and you then try to book either two Reward or two Upgrade flights in PE, you'll be out of luck because there will only be one fare left. Having said that, we have been able to book full Reward flights on two occasions and Companion flights on two other occasions, so it is possible. To further complicate the issue, it's not always simply a case of making sure you book as soon as the flights are released because the Reward fares are not necessarily released at the same time. Like you say, they don't make it easy!
