Originally Posted by
skywardhunter
I assume you refer to some kind of credit card offer? Which is probably only available to those resident in the country in which the offer is made, so of no help to those of us resident in other countries. As it stands i reside in SA, ironically BA is one of the best domestic operators here. More ironic is that the BA flights are not operated by BA, but by Comair, and both the hard product, as well as the soft product, and especially the lounges, are miles (and I mean thousands of miles) ahead of actual BA. No 100k Avios offers though...
Yes, but we're talking about ex-US surcharges being higher than elsewhere [both geographically and in this case between cabins] - which almost certainly has to do with Avios being handed out to all and sundry. The Chase BA card gives the same rate as the AmEx BA card in the UK, but in dollars rather than pounds - meaning that each US CC-earned Avios is comparatively easier to get [and it looks like the intro offer is currently 120k!].
All of which is to my counter of your "hard-earned" assertion - not a personal attack on you or your circumstances. That one can work around these "equalisations" in the BAEC scheme by using Avios outside the US is fairly well known to those here, but are clearly in place for the majority who do not know this or are not able/inclined to jump through the requisite hoops to do so.
The irony I find in all of this is the whinging from citizens of one of the most hyper-capitalist countries* in the world about a company doing what it wants to do. BA choose to keep surcharges high - we'd all rather not pay them - but those same people will often simultaneously bemoan the lack of availability on carriers where there are no surcharges**. The two are almost certainly intrinsically linked - yet those around here [who must skew overly well informed on the topic] choose time and again to rant about it.
*And indeed, from a group which probably skews hyper-capitalist - as can be seen with the implicit[/explicit] "taxes are theft" language in the connected rants about UK APD.
*There is, I think, some deserved criticism of BA charging surcharges for flying carriers who don't charge them in their own schemes [or through other schemes] - though AIUI these
are actually paid to the operator and are thus presumably contractual matters [being a way of advantaging the operating carrier's scheme without maintaining two levels of inventory
a la AA]. It does lead to the oddities of saving cash by "transferring" Avios between BA and IB, for instance.