I'd like to second beaubo's deflated enthusiasm. It's been a while since I redeemed any miles on BA (I switched to UA once BA reduced mileage to 25% on discounted economy, but still have about 175k miles from the days when I used to fly BA more regularly).

I was excited to receive the 50% off email from BA, but that quickly turned to disillusionment once I saw the huge surcharges that BA adds to award tickets. I was looking at 6 economy tickets from LHR-DEN for a family ski holiday in February. Each ticket gets slammed with €338 in charges (I'm working in Europe, so BA.com prices the taxes and surcharges in €). So that's 150k miles plus €2028 (or £1715) for 6 award tickets. When I price exactly the same trip on BA on Orbitz, it comes out at $597 all-in per ticket, for a total of $3582 (or £2336). So the difference betwen a so-called award ticket and a fully paid ticket in economy is only £104 - it seems absurd.

I realize that most people posting on FT use miles for C or F award seats, and in these cases paying £200-£300 charges is less of a burden (relatively speaking). I would love to do that! But with 4 kids I tend to use my miles for long-haul family holidays. It seems that BA's practice of adding surcharges to award tickets means that using miles for Y tickets no longer makes much sense. Just by way of contrast, this summer I was able to travel with wife + 4 kids from LHR to Hawaii (with a stopover en route in SFO) on UA, for 50k miles per person and fees/surcharges of £60 per ticket!

I was not aware of the big discrepancies between US and European carriers in terms of adding fuel surcharges to award tickets, but having read most of this thread I'm doubly glad I switched all my transatlantic travel to UA 2-3 years ago.