I had an interesting trans-Atlantic award story last year. You may recall that about 15 months ago, CO and VS started to code-share. So all of a sudden I was able to use miles for VS flights.
Well, I had a business trip to London, and my company pays for BC under certain conditions (I matched them). So I went SEA-EWR-LGW. It was nearing my dad's b-day, so I burned miles to get him an Upper Class ticket LAX-LHR to meet me in London. The cool part was, since the code sharing was so new, I was easily able to get the tickets at the lower price (100K), even though it was only two weeks out.
And VS Upper Class is second to none for trans-Atlantic. We went back together LHR-LAX, and the service was impeccable.
However, every other time I've tried to get BC on international CO, I've failed.