"Ex-Gracia, 10,000" just popped up on my BAEC account today. I haven't yet received the explanation, but the only conceivable one is that I complained about a broken CE seat (it wouldn't stay upright - only fully reclined; there was a spare seat but that did the opposite) on a LGW-MAD flight a couple of months back. I had a holding letter from them a couple of weeks ago acknowledging receipt of my complaint but saying it could take a month to resolve due to an unusually high level of correspondence at the moment.

All in all, I'd say that was very satisfactory compensation and well worth the 10 minutes or so spent filling out the form. Incidentally, I am not a serial complainer and this is the first time I've got compensation like this, but I was inspired to do it with the tales on here of compensation for AVOD's not working. I even felt I'd done the decent thing by only complaining about something that I care about. I've taken three flights in NNCW and in at least two the AVOD wasn't working at all (on the third I have no idea as it was a sleeper service and I went to bed literally seconds after take-off); yet I didn't complain then since I really don't care about IFE at all.

Now a general question. How to spend miles? Most people seem to be agreed that one of the best uses for miles is to MFU on flights to North America from W to J. (On other long-haul routes there never seems to be availability on the days I want, if at all - so then I pay for J, or more precisely for I.) But I'm accumulating miles at a faster rate than I can spend them on this sort of MFU, even at the rate of two leisure trips to North America annually. So what is the next best use of miles in terms of bang for your buck? Ideally suggest something where availability isn't virtually impossible.