Originally Posted by AAmerican_in_London
Here is a scenario: My wife (to be) and I are planning on going to Asia on honeymoon; tickets cost about £725 each (approximately $2900 total) in Y. If I was to use 105k miles for a J ticket, plus exchange the 4 eVIPs for another J ticket, I would still have 70k miles left for another BA J award to say BOM or DXB, or with a slight top-off, NBO or CPT.
You have to calculate in the miles you earn with paid flight as well as what you spend for your award in taxes!
Additionally wt+ might be worth a look - you may not have miles on AA but you live in the UK and therefor can do all the tesco stuff to earn miles for an upgrade wt plus plus 25K (no other copay) for a flight in cw. Including earning a lot of miles on the way as wtp is not cheapish economy.