First time; long time. I was able to grab a couple PE AAward seats for my family for Thanksgiving (via AA.com, all on BA metal). Went shopping for what it will cost me for my (revenue) ticket and shop it amongst the OW carriers. Oddly, I can't get any of the carriers to spit out the same itinerary (AUS-LHR-RAK). They all want to route the return through Madrid or JFK or anything other than the "simple" route that I've got on hold. The same goes for looking at things on EF. I can see it on google flights, and I can then "push" it from there to AA or Expedia, but then "weird things" happen (on Expedia, it forces the outbound to become I/J, with the return in Economy K/T). AA seems to work OK (when pushed in from google), but the price balloons to $3200 for PE. If I build the whole thing as "Business" on google, I can get a $2800 fare in I/J which will push to Expedia, but--having never actually booked anything through Expedia, I'm not particularly fond of that option and would prefer to book through AA or BA.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong or what's "special" about this route. Perhaps it's the overnight layover in LHR on the return (though BA will happily allow an overnight but only via DFW!)

Below are the specifics. I appreciate your insights on my apparently "special" routing.

Nov 19 - 19:05 - BA190 - AUS-LHR
Nov 20 - 11:40 - BA668 - LHR-RAK

Nov 26 - 15:40 - BA669 - RAK-LHR
Nov 27 - 12:10 - BA191 - LHR-AUS