My own very recent experience in booking a multicarrier award was incredibly frustrating in terms of the complete inconsistency of advice i received, so HUACA is always an option if you dont like the first answer you receive (assuming you have the patience of a saint).

The final answer i received was that backtracking was not permitted. I wasn’t comfortable with this and spent a lot of time looking at potential multicarrier bookings through ba.com (ie round trip avios bookings with 2 non BA oneworld partners). Interestingly whilst many itineraries with backtracking could be selected they could not be priced online, whilst those without backtracking could be priced online, reflecting the appropriate application of the multicarrier pricing table.
Based on those findings I gave up on my original more aggressive itinerary.

I would also note that recent coverage of these redemptions in blogs eg HFP a few weeks ago presenting these redemptions as an opportunity to book 8 award flights without any constraints no doubt raises the number of queries coming into BA and the scrutiny around them.

A final word of caution, even if your discussion with the agent goes smoothly and the itinerary isnt challenged there is still a decent chance it will be rejected by ticketing. Given the time it takes to root out award availability this is particularly frustrating.

Fair point - I had not twigged that one might actually be able to price some of these online. When you say itineraries with backtacking, do you mean the likes of AAA-BBB-CCC-BBB-AAA would not price? [Without a stopover, I would personally argue this should not be classified as "backtracking"].

I'd forgotten about the HFP coverage, though my assumption with these rewards is that they will attract enough notice to be questioned at some point. On the one hand that wouldn't be the worst thing if it merely causes BA to actually publish the rules we're having to infer from anecdote - on the other it could result in the removal of some of the better features.

[QUOTE=etiene;30745130]Fair point - I had not twigged that one might actually be able to price some of these online. When you say itineraries with backtacking, do you mean the likes of AAA-BBB-CCC-BBB-AAA would not price? [Without a stopover, I would personally argue this should not be classified as "backtracking"].

When i say backtracking i mean reversing the overall direction of travel (other than as the start of a return leg). So for example:
DOH to NRT return
Permitted routings (via QR/JL/CX) eg Hanoi, Bangkok, Shanghai, HK all no issue to price online.
However routings through London, for example, cannot be priced online.
As another example HKG-DOH return could not be routed through Tokyo.

By mapping out the flight paths on GC map i could discern the logic being applied.

This is a very strict interpretation, even preventing backtracking in the same continent. I dont believe that this is consistently applied in practise though.

My past experience in changing a booking was like this:
call UK centre to initiate changes. The agent will claim the change is made, but need to reprice manually. Usually this will led to dead end, no confirmation on new price, but if you head to MMB, all segments (new and old) will appear as a mess.

You then call India centre ask to complete the repricing, maybe 3-5 days after first call. This will take at least 15-30+ minutes waiting, but all manual repricing should complete in just 1 call. Mine case involves further changes and ended up taking 3 hours to complete,maybe shorter if things are going your way.

Amen to that. On the face of it, it may look like a good deal. But once you factor in the time it takes to piece everything together it is much less so. And that is coming from someone with access to the GGL line and free changes. Doing this through the regular blue line I think I'd rather stay home.