I got sucked into the 100k promotion that they had earlier last year through Chase and since then I have accumulated two companion vouchers and a good amount of AVIOS points. I was well aware of the outrageous fuel charges, taxes, imposed by BA routing through LHR, but felt that if I were able to obtain a long haul flight in business or first, it would still be worth it.

I don't have a specific trip planned in mind as of yet, but I thought since I have two of these vouchers I may take a trip to London for a week over the summer. SFO would be the home base, and when I looked through the BA calendar for a flight from SFO to LHR, I could not find anything available in the timeframe I would want. Business had maybe four availabilities of dates pushing the date all the way out through 04/2015, and in first the availability was maybe two dates all the way through the same period. Coach was widely available but doesn't make sense in using points.

I tried other scenarios of not using the companion pass and trying to purchase a coach ticket using miles to upgrade, but the only availabilities were to premium economy.

While I was prepared for always paying for fuel charges, etc, I never expected the actual availability of using Avios to be this difficult on the actual carrier. Is this a usual scenario on BA? Although I've had to be a little flexible in dates on AAdvantage, I normally have been able to get the tickets I wanted. I tried another scenario on BA of flying out of LAX and had similar results.

If the availability isn't there through their redemption program, I may just start switch back to using AA. How far out does BA release seats into Avios for booking availability? Any advise on using miles on BA with a companion pass?