Originally Posted by
kurtangle
My approximate schedule is:
November Various European short haul
January London to Australia return and several domestic.
March London to Dallas return.
April London to Lax return
May Various European short haul
June London to NYC return and various US domestic
July Various European short haul
September London to Toronto return
October Various European short haul
December London to Australia and various domestic.
Based on this, and assuming business class on the long-hauls per your description, you could easily make BA Gold, or probably AA Executive Platinum. With AA EXP you'd earn 8 one-way systemwide upgrades (on AA metal) and while I haven't gone through the numbers, I suspect you'd end up with more spendable AAdvantage miles than you would Avios, and in any event IMO the AA program is more generous on redemptions than the revamped BAEC comparables.
It might behoove you to do a side-by-side comparo, using BA tier points and AA elite qualifying
points (1.5 per flown mile in PE or higher) as the metrics - you need 100K elite qualifying points or elite qualifying miles for EXP, i.e. 66.6K butt-in-seat miles in PE, J or F. AA uses a calendar year for its qualifications, with the status expiring at the end of February the following year. (In other words, qualify during calendar 2016 and the status expires 1 March 2018.)