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Originally Posted by ajnaro
It seems to me that the overwhelming consideration here is that BA allows pooling of miles within the family. That means a family can accumulate miles for all of its members and then get award tickets for some of them, while others buy tickets. If each family member has a separate account it may mean that none of them have enough miles for an award.
Yes, but ....
A HEL-LHR-JNB-LHR-HEL roundtrip would earn about 13,000 miles in either program, which would be enough for an intra-European one-way to be booked with AA miles by each member of the party, whether in one's own name or someone else's.
BAEC would be better for redemptions between HEL and the UK because of the distance-based nature of the BAEC redemption scheme and the availability of Reward Flights Savers; and for redemptions made less than 21 days before departure, since AAdvantage charges non-elites a $75 close-in award-booking fee, and BAEC does not. But if a HEL-based traveler expects to book awards primarily on AY, then an AAdvantage redemption will likely have lower out-of-pocket costs, due to the absence of surcharges.