Planning a trip to Europe next summer. I know I want to fly July 3. I can get availability to London but not sure if I want to fly to London, Scotland or somewhere else. AA has availability to London right now and I am thinking of grabbing it.

But also thinking about going to Edinburgh which would be ORD-LHR-EDI. LHR-EDI actually adds $95 in fees. I can also just book it separately for only 4500 BA miles and $20.

I read somewhere on this forum that you can now drop a segment from an award and not pay a change fee. Meaning if I book ORD-LHR-EDI and decide I only want to fly to LHR, I can cancel the LHR-EDI segment and get my $95 back. Is this true?

I have also read that you are protected from misconnects when you have two oneworld tickets. So I could book ORD-LHR with AA miles and LHR-EDI with BA miles and it will make no practical difference between booking it all as one ticket with AA miles. Is this true?