Thanks for the additional info. If this were for myself, I would go through an extra stop - or just make it easy on myself and fly AA. But I am trying to gift the award to my parents who will only fly BA - so if they are picky enough to only fly AA, then they are certainly not going to make extra stops in Canada or Manchester. So it looks like they're paying cash for their tix. But thank you for correcting my overly broad statement.