had called BAEC this morning and was told that to be on the same PNR, it had to be an award booking all the way. no mix of cash and award on the same PNR.

however, i did find a creative solution to our situation that doesn't really change things too much.

instead of staying the night in stockholm and then flying ARN-LHR-YVR the next day, the last flight of the day out of ARN was available as an award redemption and then take the flight home the following day. we'll stay at a heathrow hotel, which is cheaper than stockholm anyway, plus, it appears that if you spend less than 24 hours in london, you don't have to pay that outrageous UK air passenger duty which is $220 per person!

overall, it's substantially cheaper to get an award ticket all the way and you get a single PNR and the connection is in club europe rather than economy.

so two tickets, BA F YVR-LHR and CE LHR-ARN for a bit over CAD1,700 and 180k avios. it would have been 130k avios had we done CW but we always do CW and wanted to check out F for the heck of it.

thanks BAEC, i think this is a wonderful deal. to heck with all the whiners that complain about avios being worthless. i get very good value from them.