Originally Posted by MarkedMan

When I was a VS gold, it was eminently clear that upgrading a paid Y ticket was a far smarter thing to do under the circs than purchasing a reward. Alas, IIRC BA will not let you upgrade Y to CW, which makes the economics trickier.

As for other considerations ... my 1K is usually hit bit traveling to Europe a fair bit, five trips minimum a year, which gets me close to 70k BIS on AA, plus some east coast trips, other odds and sods, and CC EQMs. On the odd higher yield ticket, B to Z, with UA I'll hit closer to 150, but that may not happen on AA due to the way the math works.

My biggest reason to consider OW has always been the fact I transit through LHR and stop there a fair bit, probably around half my trips to Europe are that way. Onward Europe travel then means a stopover in MUC, which is not the worst thing that could happen to a traveling person, nor is it ideal, though.

If you travel to Europe a lot, the biggest downer is in the way BA has structured its network compared to LH. LH basically runs a low cost, high volume subsidiary operation built on Avro jets (in the past) and E90s now, as well as a wide array of planes in various state of mechanical precariousness run by subsidiaries like Augsburg, Air Dolomiti and so on ... the net result of which is that almost any place you might want to go to that they fly to, they fly many times a day, from both FRA and MUC. The routing flexibility is amazing, and you will never get too messed up if missing a connection. In the two times I have gotten stuck flying into MUC, both times the net result was simply a couple of pleasant extra hours in the LH SEN lounge in MUC.

Of those two times, only one was because of a delay (the other was during the LH strike a couple years back). LHR is a pain - I nearly missed a connection in ORD last year simply because it took an hour to take off after leaving the gate, which at LHR is a common occurrence. The idea of routing all my Euro flying through LHR is a little unnerving. FRA is unnerving too, but with LH there is always Munich, and that is as good an airport to have to use in Europe as you can get.

So, back to OP - as a former BA person, and frequent LHR connecting guy, there is indeed a lot to like especially if we focus on the FF program right now; I feel the practical aspects of LH flying are far superior to BA right now though. YMMV