Originally Posted by
lost_in_translation
I don’t see why this is a big surprise, personally. BAEC and BA as an airline are massively weighted towards the US these days and I imagine a large and growing percentage of Avios collectors are US-based. These members are clearly most likely to use their Avios for flights either within or from the US. Given how crazily easy it is to obtain miles in the US today, one should eventually expect BA US redemption pricing to end up looking like the US carriers (have you seen what DL charges for a TATL redemption these days?!). If BA eventually moves TATL flights to North America to higher bands than other longhaul routes of the same distance I wouldn’t be surprised either.
I would argue BA and VS have been differentiating between north American customers and everybody else for sometime, at least on their metal (and with the recent VS devaluation of DL awards to Europe some partners as well). The way BA and VS do it is with surcharges which are always higher, sometimes considerably so ex-US. VS now charges $2300 cash component on the J fares ex-US round trip and this is on a route where cash fares are often $3000. So 95k VS miles (off peak) between east coast of US and LHR saves you a a whole $700 or less than a penny a point (VS is out DL'ing DL at this point). And yes I booking as two one ways with VS would save you some money since you'd get the ex-UK rate on one leg. In fact I just never US VS metal ex-US on points.
BA does similar though this is now sort of hidden and somewhat muted due to RFS. But BA now ties your surcharges to your BAEC address so the trick of booking two one ways doesn't work now as it does with VS. It also means I cannot see what UK customers are paying under RFS. However F is not RFS and doing a search on that an F booking from LHR to east coast of US round trip has a surcharge of $1,079.11 and F round trip from east coast US to LHR has a surcharge of $2,320.03. That is to put it mildly a pretty major difference.