Originally Posted by corporate-wage-slave

The system is biased to BA metal and there are good reasons for that in terms of end to end processing, customer relations and ticketing. Had the OP made a request for the QR service (a) it would have been agreed and (b) it would not have cost BA any significant sum due to the way that IATA inter-bill each other for irrops. If it was purely money driving then probably QR would have been cheapest overall, but there isn't a micro analysis of this, BA have policies in place which simply provide that BA as far as possible resolves these cases internally to BA.