Airline frequent flyer flyer rewards becoming too taxing to cash in

Frequent-flier miles have taken me around the world. African safaris, a snorkeling trip on the Great Barrier Reef, a Baltic Sea cruise and treks in the Himalayas have all been possible thanks to airfare paid with miles. So it was a shock when a group of fellow elite-mileage travelers and I recently went to book flights for a cruise and found that that the "taxes and carrier fees" on the flights we wanted were as costly as the co-pay on an out-of-network medical claim. The good news: Mileage tickets to Rome via American's oneworld partnership were available for the mid-summer cruise we'd planned. Bad news: The "taxes and fee" tariff was $700. Buying the ticket outright was only a few hundred dollars more. American Express miles -- which can be applied to Delta's SkyMiles program and SkyTeam members -- wouldn't help us either. Seats were available there as well -- for a whopping 110,000 miles. End of an era? What was happening? Were my days of globetrotting over? Not exactly, said Tim Winship, who runs the website FrequentFlier.com. The basic strategy I've used throughout the years does still work, he confirmed. I book as far head as possible, call the airline instead of relying on the Internet alone, and keep trying until I can snag something that works. I'm flexible about dates and don't cringe at paying for a night in an airport hotel -- a worthwhile trade for an air ticket worth thousands. But in recent years, many mileage programs