The trick, unfortunately, is that many of us aren't in the UK, and that means we've got a single route on which all of our convenient redemption capacity depends. I'm in Seattle; there is no BA itinerary to anywhere which doesn't start SEA-LHR. If I'm willing to go out of my way a bit, I can fly out of Vancouver, and if I'm willing to pay for a connecting flight, I can fly out of a few other western-US gateways, but really, without my having to goof around quite a bit to get it done, if there isn't SEA-LHR availability I'm not in a good position to do anything. So route flexibility for most of us, really, is somewhere between zero and very limited.

Now, personally, I despise flying longhaul coach so much that I'm willing to shell out for a flight to San Francisco, or Las Vegas, or some such place, to get myself onto a flight to LHR if I can fly in F or J. But there was a time, just a few years ago, when I simply didn't have to do that, and that time now seems to be long past. Even those alternate-gateway trips are really hard to book now sometimes--where, a few years ago, I could always count on Houston even if I couldn't get a seat from any other gateway (and no, that's not very convenient--a costly four-hour flight to hook up to BA, while BA flies planes out of Seattle with substantial numbers of empty seats in F and J).

There seems to be a common theme to which people keep returning which is that you can't expect to be able to book any seat, on any flight, at any season. Well, duh. But nobody is complaining that they can't book any seat, on any flight, at any season; what I hear is people complaining that BA availability has been drastically narrowed from what it used to be, and that's certainly consistent with my own observations.