For someone traveling in Coach (as the inquiring FTer hopes to), it makes little sense to pay 60,000 miles and some fees to route via the Middle East on two awards, versus 22,500 miles and about $200 to route via LON. To me, paying an extra 37,500 miles to save something less than $200 is crazy -- unless one wants to stop over for one or more days somewhere in the Middle East.

Yup, agreed. Thanks for the answers, everyone. This helps!

I'm trying to price an award DUB-LHR-SFO in BA J (yes, don't judge...)

BA.com US (dummy Avios booking) quotes around $250 in taxes and fees and AA.com quotes $290. I looked at the components and the only difference is in the YQ. Why would AA charge a higher YQ? With such difference I would assume that it is not currency fluctuations too...

I would suspect that AA is charging YQ for DUB-LHR plus YQ for LHR-SFO whilst BA is charging YQ for DUB-SFO

Can you not get a routing on , say , EI directly from DUB to USA?

Thanks. I'm inclined to believe that's the case but I looked on BA.com separately, no YQ for DUB-LHR but YQ for LHR-SFO is not exactly what AA wants to charge for YQ DUB-LHR-SFO (but close enough).

I thought it's not possible to book EI with AA miles. And I guess BA is still 'better' than EI......

I assume DFW-PHL-ATH + a cheap cash fare ATH-IST doesn't appeal to you. (And granted, PHL-ATH is only seasonal.)

Ugh! BA fees... Creative ideas welcome!
 

Hi,

My parents have roughly 200k AA miles each. One has 80k United Miles, the other has 12k United.

They live in south Florida (FLL, MIA). They are travelling into Kilamanjaro (JRO) in June and departing Livingston (LVI) in July. They are also trying to visit a friend in London on one side of this trip.
I am trying to work a nice comfortable business class trip out for them, without depleting all of their miles AND all of their cash. The best itinerary I found for 1 portion of the trip was 75,000 miles plus $650 pp. I tried calling AA to see if there were options for MIA-DOH-JRO but they showed no avail. I checked the BA Avios site to look for Qatar availabilty but I couldn't find JRO either.
For you AAa members, any creative ideas? Any way to reduce BA's high surcharges? Or alternate/hidden city ideas?
Thank you in advance!

I'd try AA metal into London. In order to fly to JRO, you have a few options. BA can get you to NBO, and then take Precision Air into Arusha. Obviously, BA has the huge surcharges for that one leg. The other two carriers into JRO that might work are KLM from Amsterdam and Turkish Airways from IST. Don't know if you have enough Star Alliance miles to do that, though. As you noted, Qatar does fly in from Doha, but award seats are very few.

QR is for sure the way to go if you can find availability. QR generally doesn't release any business award seats on the US-DOH routes on Fridays or Saturdays, with Thurs & Sun being hit or miss depending on the city. Mon/Tues/Wed will have much more space.

Using your BA account, search all of QR's US gateways to DOH, not just MIA. Think ATL, IAH, DFW, ORD, IAD, etc. Find space on the long segment, then search the DOH-JRO flight separately. From most gateways it looks like this will require an overnight in DOH, make sure you keep the dates straight.

If you find flights that line up on BA, call AA and give the AAgent the flights segment by segment. You can then have them search for the flight from MIA to the gateway on AA, which they can include in the same award.

weird taxes on reward ticket
 

Hi,

Looking on a reward ticket possibility EUR-NA and finding weird taxes and fees.
The availability is BA both ways with connection in LHR, and I know they have huge LHR taxes but -
one way outbound, only available in Y, if I want to book it, the taxes are ~$270
one way inbound, only available in F, taxes are ~$500
roundtrip, same itineraries exactly (outbound Y, inbound F, BA flights, connections in LHR) total taxes ~$470.

HUH?

BA adds major carrier imposed surcharges. This is a known issue with BA flights. It's why there's in general award availability on BA flights even when none on others.

It's not the taxes or the LHR PSC that varies; it's the carrier-imposed surcharges that AA collects for award travel on BA. Those surcharges can vary considerably, depending on where the award travel originates. Thus a roundtrip award issued on a single ticket originating in Europe will have different carrier-imposed fees that two one ways, where one originates in Europe, and the other originates in the U.S.

Thank you for your help! We found MIA-DOH-DAR for 75,000 and $19 in taxes/fees. Sure beats 75k and $600 on BA!

Help with ??? on BA flights via AA miles?
 

I'm not sure if I understand exactly how the oneworld partner awards work so please bare with me.

I've searched on the BA website for a trip from JFK-BKK in business and found award availability. The flights are both on BA. It goes JFK-LHR-BKK. Is this a valid iteniary to book with aa miles via customer service and will it only cost me the 70K miles?

You can book BA flights on AA.com. No need to go through customer service. Huge fees will apply.