How else are you earning your miles out of interest Lee_Again. There might be a few ideas to boost your earnings knocking around that people could post for you.

Dont give up on the dream, im sure its possible, however you might find that with a group of 4 you might need to split over 2 different daily flights or something like that.

however be flexible, iv just found 4 CW reward seats in each direction between LHR-LAX-LHR for May 2012, just picking random dates.

if the destination you want hasnt got availability, why not try one of the other North American cities that BA fly into and then book a seperate connecting flight with AA ?

Basically, its not a stupid idea to try and find 4 MFU seats available, just might not be possible to every destination, but to some it seems as if you can find it fairly easily.

cs