My guess sometimes AA CSR were simply not willing to help or their systems were really just screwy. I found 3 biz seats on CX for Dec travel on BA site and when I called AA I was told they were not available. I found it hard to believe since the agent was so quick with the response and seemed he simply didn't check. When I said I saw the availability on BA website I was given a lecture about that I should only check CX availability on aa.com unless I want to book my CX tickets with BA miles/points. I insisted that he check again then he came back in 2 minutes said no there were only 2 biz seats available. I had my wife called aa on the second phone line while I had the first agent check other partners and she was able to locate the 3 biz seats (JFK->HKG->HGH) so I hung up my line and booked with the second AA CSR. No idea what was going on with the first CSR.

The second day I decided to save my AA points and use up my BA points for the return trip but when I did a search on BA.com for CX, the HGH->JFK via HKG was just not available at all. What was strange was that the individual segments were, however, available. I called BA but they could not tell me why or how to proceed with the booking so I ended up with two booking HGH->HKG and then HKG->JFK instead of HGH->HKG->JFK on one record locator. Does anyone know why that is the case with BA? Did I ended up paying more BA points or surcharge (I think I ended about $300 fuel surcharge and 85K BA points for each biz ticket on CX).