The EC US line has allowed me to put BA awards on hold while I transfer Starwood points, but they were not able to put partner flights on hold. YMMV

 

Actually it was a MFU whereby the Company was paying the base fare.

 

I've had redemptions held for me for up to 72 hours. I'd had to book over the phone, as they weren't bookable on ba.com (open jaw on IB). The agent spontaneously offered to hold the reservations for me, though I wasn't expecting it and it allowed me to confirm a number of other aspects of my trip.

 

Perhaps I'm getting confused with another issue, but isn't the �15 redposit fee waived for Golds. In which case this is a total non-issue - you can book the tickets and then cancel them whenever you want without penalty.

 

Correct. It's generally a non-issue for Golds unless you are trying to construct a rather complicated itinerary.

 

Non-status, US call center, I've been told

* No holds at all
* No holds on partner awards
* No holds when transferring Amex points, holds ok when transferring from other sources (like they'd know where you're really transferring from..)
* Holds are fine on all-BA metal
* Holds are fine

I've even done a seven day hold on a partner award.

I admit, I didn't want to see whether it would really stick for seven days, I was afraid that the partner might cancel out the untickeed reservation. But it's a partner that I've booked awards with directly and that hasn't gotten around to ticketing their own award reservations for a month, so..

Seems that there's little technical problem holding awards, but policy is not to do so (at least for plebes like me) though this is inconsistently applied.