Originally Posted by
HIDDY
To be fair it is British Airways and therefore designed around UK and European members firstly.
Exactly. This is not a problem of 'preference' but one of competition. I'm sure EC is very happy to have some members is the US, Singapore, or the Emirates, but essentially, BA's EC is competing with LH's M&M and AF's FB. This means that any hope that BA will drop fuel surcharges on award booking is frankly unrealistic. It is already good that they have moved to fixed taxes on European rewards as occasionally, before, the taxes paid for reward prices in Y could be higher than sale fares offered at the same moment on paid tickets!!
There are a number of axes of competition: ability to accrue miles, value and availability of award trips, value and availability of upgrades, ease of achieving the two elite levels, quality of care and service associated with the two elite levels, etc. Right now, it seems that BA has slightly improved points 2 for most members, and poiont 3 for UK travellers and those flying into the UK. If they could strengthen one or two of the other elements they would probably become the most attractive FF programme in Europe at the moment.