Just trying to use some of my significant mileage balance this week for a spring holiday, and very disappointed in BA availability, and especially, the degree that they've used "fuel surcharges" as a blank check excuse to crush their best customers when trying to redeem miles.

I"m a Gold Exec, have been for years. I fly biz class US-Asia EVERY MONTH. Probably spend something like $50,000USD a year of my employer and clients travel money just with them not to mention the other airlines that get slices of my business ($100k a year total maybe?).

Well while I appreciate a lot of good things from BA, the award travel benefit has been inflated down to nothing.

At this point a round trip ticket to anyplace I want to use them for means something like $600-800 in cash fees to me. And that's even if its a "World Traveller" coach ticket more amazingly. Some of the fares I checked are LESS to just buy the whole ticket than to use a slew of miles and pay the absurdly criminal fee.

On top of that seat availability is extremely limited (despite a cheerful "extra seats have been made available due to your premium status!" notice).

Meanwhile over at my United Star Alliance account, fees for a RT business ticket to the other side of the world? $35. Availability? Almost any date I want, any class.

I mean I love the BA flight quality (as long as things are running smooth at LHR on any given week of course) and I love the lounges, but it's policies like this that are going to take, JUST IN MY CASE ALONE, 10's of thousands of dollars out of their till because they are taking benefit directly out of my personal pocket.

My wife and I found this before where we practically just couldn't use miles because the street price was about the same as the fees (and you're always better in that case buying in case of a bump situation) but if it gets any worse, I'll NEVER use my BA miles. Meaning I'll never want to fly with them anymore...

I see lots of AF/KLM folks complaining about this as well, hopefully some EU characters will step in and give these airlines the smackdown for slowing taking away what was formerly a real premium for long term customer loyalty (and a lot of cumulative cash spent!)...