Redeam AA or BA miles first?
 

Who’s miles to burn, that is the question.

Looking to book award flights on American. We have both BA & AA miles. For AA it’s off-peak, so 30,000 AAdvantage miles, however BA doesn’t have off-peak so it’s 35,000 BA miles. Taxes are the same.

I generally value AAdvantage miles more due to the lack of a fuel surcharge, but as we all know that could change tomorrow.

Here’s the question for FT’ers

Do I:
(a) Burn the BA miles while I can w/o a fuel surcharge
(c) Burn the AA miles while it's an reduced mileage award

We have about an even number of miles with both carriers.

BA vs AA
 

FT'ers are being shy about BA vs AA miles?

I think the lack of responses is due to the fact that you don't (a) indicate where you'd be going to use them, and/or (b) you don't indicate what future plans you might have where either source could be used.

I for one, and I expect many of us, do an informal (or maybe formal) plan for burning miles that extends over time, usually past the next trip.

In that scenario, you might be better conserving the AA miles for a trip where BA fuel fines would be an issue otherwise (e.g. using BA transatlantic) or where an AA Oneworld award (arguably one of the most powerful FF redemption vehicles) would be the chosen approach.

Or you might conserve the BA miles for, e.g., a N. America < > S. America award, where the mileage requirement is lower than AA's for business class travel. And so on.

Personally, with ATI looming and the likely integration of many of BA's, IB's and AA's operations over the coming year, I'm building my AA balance this year so that once the FF plans are "aligned" (whatever the hell that means - be afraid) I'll be able either (a) burn them in a hurry if the program sucks; or (b) congratulate myself on being grandfathered into an even better system.

I personally am burning my BA miles, but since you gave no parameters of your thinking it's hard to recommend. generalising is not of great value when miles are concerned.

Thanks for the feedback

Immediate plans; Round-trip North America to Caribbean in coach.

Immediate plans; Round-trip North America to Caribbean in coach.

Future: No set future plans. Most likely to Caribbean, S. America, & Europe. (in that order).

Since I have no set plans

I favor saving AA miles because (using BA miles)
(a) Flexibility of double mileage AAwards – if I want a trip to the Caribbean for new years all the BA miles in the world won’t get me a ticket if I didn’t book it at 3XX days out.
(b) No (current) fuel surcharges – If I do decide to hop over the pond or head to Australia (even though I have no current plans to), it’s nice to know I won’t have to work over additional miles.
(c) BA sometimes adds mysterious additional taxes to AA flights

I favor using AA miles because:
(d) Why spend 17% more miles than I have to? (35k BA miles vs 30k BA miles)
=> If LAN doesn’t add an award fuel surcharge (like they may) most my flying would be on LAN or AA, so why spend the extra miles?
(e) BA allows stopovers outside of North America

=>Good info

Grandfathering? I wouldn’t have expected any grandfathering, but could be interesting.

Even if an award takes 17% more BA miles than AA miles you're still burning your BA miles?

No, but my BA miles let me send my nephew GIG-NYC-GIG for slightly less than the AA quote at the time, and there was no fuel surcharge.

I might have done it anyway, though, because the BA CW product is so irritating to me, and I just want to be shut of all connection with BA. That may not be rational,:o