Originally Posted by
wendyg
Having just reread the BA fare rules, someone tell me if I've got this right. Let's say I find round-trip tickets LHR-PHL priced at £500 on AA *and* BA. As I read it, if we assume that, say, £200 of the fare is government taxes (just for simplicity), then with the £ at $1.25 AA you'd expect EQDs to come out at 375, BUT in the 2nd to lowest BA class they calculate EQDs as 10% of distance flown, which comes out to roughly 700 EQD (7000 miles flown).
That being the case, it would be advantageous for me to fly BA rather than AA. Is this really what they want?
wg
In this case it would in fact be advantageous for you to fly BA. This just goes back to the whole concept that distance flown rarely correlates to price paid nowadays. Since AA cannot award EQDs based on the fare paid to another airline, they have to go with awarding EQDs based on a percentage of the distance that is
most likely to correlate with the fare paid. Booking codes do a generally good job of that, but there will still be cases where the EQDs awarded are higher. Also don't forget that the EQMs on low fare BA flights are still awarded at a rate of .5, which could potentially offset the EQD earnings.