Originally Posted by
tsg20
- fuel surcharges on award tickets on BA appear to be pretty horrifying
Only if you insist on flying BA metal l/h.
For US Domestic reward tickets you might be pleasantly surprised at the low fees, plus there's no close-in booking fee like AA levy. Other OW carriers can also be relatively good value, check out NYC-HKG with CX in J or F and you'll find the surcharges are (fairly) reasonable.
EDIT: ORD-NYC-HKG with AA then CX J is 120k + £64. Some of us think £64 is a steal for almost 16h of CX J !
EDIT: s/h rewards round Europe are also good value as the fees are capped, read up on RFS.
On the other hand, I think I'd have to fly 4 AA flights/year, which might be tricky, and I'm not sure in what other ways I would be gaining, except possibly in lower fuel surcharges.
If you opted for AA, couldn't you book a TATL to deliberately include AA or US metal sectors? ORD-NYC-LON or, if you were keen to do it all in one crazy itin, ORD-WAS-NYC-LON or something? That would get you the AA or US metal sectors pretty easily, and probably makes only a marginal difference to price.