Originally Posted by GUWonder

I often seem to find BA awards that are more expensive than simply buying a ticket. A BA part-cash-part-miles booking often results in BA making more money off the customer at the time of booking than BA would get for selling a regular ticket for travel between the same city pairs.

A couple of days ago I ran into this bizarre one too: a BA-miles-only ticket for LHR-MIA on BA had BA charging customers more money than for a BA-miles-only ticket for LHR-PHL-MIA on BA and AA. It made no sense unless MIA charges substantially more for international-arriving passengers than PHL does for international-arriving passengers and transiting on to a domestic location.