Originally Posted by
BillBurn
I have found that the award taxes aren't bad at all if on your outbound leg you transit at LHR from AA to intra-European BA because the value of those intra-european BA segments is so low that the taxes are not significant. Returning thru LHR is a different story though ...
My strategy lately has been to transit via LHR on the outbound, use BA to get to the exact jump off point I want and then plan travel so that I can return on AA metal direct to US out of one of their gateways (although it seems like every European country has some form of departure tax, just not as high as UK).
True. I (like many others) probably assumed you were looking for J seats.. which are much harder to come by in U inventory as well as much more expensive in terms of YQ. An assumption I made, and a flawed one at that. That whole no one on FT flys in Y or is anything lower than a PLT thing
The best bet is to use the AA map (linked a couple times above). That should give an idea of where to look.