I undertook rigorous planning to get the five-carrier bonus with BA (UK), AA and Canadian. Apart from one Finnair domestic segment that didn't go through automatically to Canadian, all is going OK with AA and Canadian. BA is another story however.

In order to ensure that my AA flight would qualify for BA (UK) Air Miles, I went through several hurdles:

(1) Two separate phone calls to BA Exec Club both confirmed that the terms and conditions they mailed me for the promotion were wrong. "Eligible fares" is defined in these as any flight operated and marketed by a OneWorld Alliance member. In fact, BA told me that they would also insist on the definition of "eligible" given in the terms and conditions of the Executive Club but not mentioned in the OneWorld promotion. This meant that tickets had to be "fully flexible economy, business or first".

(2) Taking this into account, I placed an option on AA.com on flights from Palm Springs to Las Vegas, via LAX. The web site gave the cheapest fully flexible ticket as one with a fare basis code of "K26". I got a printout showing that K26 fares are not restricted in any way. The ticket was fully flexible.

(3) A call to AA confirmed that the K26 ticket was fully flexible.

(4) A call to BA Exec Club in the UK confirmed that (i) if the ticket was fully flexible, it would qualify for mileage, and (ii) since October, K class tickets on American have qualified for mileage if you are a Silver or Gold member, which I am. [I have this week established that (ii) is not true; the person I spoke to was wrongly reading me the rules that apply to BA US members!]

(5) I confirmed the ticket and took the journey, using my BA ff for the PSP-LAX sector and my Canadian ff for the LAX-LAS sector.

The Canadian miles went through OK. But guess what, BA now says I can't have miles for PSP-LAS because it wasn't a Y class ticket. I have asked in vain for a copy of the rules that say that the ticket has to be in Y class. In fact, all the Exec club rules say is that the ticket has to be fully flexible. I have asked in vain in what way my ticket was not flexible. This is still with BA Exec Club, but it is not looking hopeful. It is particularly annoying as I could have paid just £60 more to get a Y class ticket, and would have done so had BA not assured me that my K class ticket would be sufficient.

Have any BA UK members managed to get mileage for these very rare fully flexible economy tickets that are not actually in Y class? (I suspect they have an advanced purchase requirement, but that doesn't affect their flexibility of course.)