Hi,

I'm sure you all get this question a lot, but is there any way to avoid paying BA's exorbitant(!) fees for an award booking with another airline? Namely, I've found a deal with AA to fly to Barcelona over the Christmas holidays for what is basically 40K miles round trip + $40 fee. I've got the BA Chase Card with plenty of miles on it, but when I try to book through BA, I'm being asked for 60K miles + $600+. The flight itself on AA costs about $650 at most, so there's almost no reason for me to even want to purchase this flight with miles through BA.

I tried calling them and they gave me the same quote as online on the BA site. Is there any way to avoid this, or am I basically out of luck on these types of bookings?

Thanks.