What I'm wondering is if the OP's colleague had to fly through Heathrow en route from Shanghai to New York - to me, flying that route one-way on BA doesn't make sense to me.

How about JAL for $3000 one way in business or AA for $4000 one way in business. Don't know about JAL but you can pre-assign seating without status on AA (J class on an AA 777-200 is really quite good). I even found a $2300 fare one-way in C class using ANA, SQ and AA via NRT and LAX.