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It turns out BA Executive Club has a separate chart for multi-airline awards, and oh my do they sting you.
The chart can be found here:
This is economy, regardless of one-way or return. Premium economy is 1.5x, business 2x and first 3x.
I came across this when searching for New York – Boston roundtrip, expecting 9,000 Avios. I selected US on the outbound and AA on the inbound and got 30,000.
The solution in such cases is to book separate one-ways at 4,500 each. More difficult are those instances forcing multiple partners on a one-way. The BA website does not usually mix partners in its one-way searches though it should be possible to book online or on the phone. Beware!
See more on this at Head for Points, where he posits there might be some rare cases where this chart can be useful.
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@Pat – I doubt it would have been corrected. My surmise is only what the website knows may work with them, then something manual can trigger the multi-partner.
This chart killed me in SE Asia, where the only OneWorld carrier for smaller airports is Dragonair. Dragonair is the regional subsidiary of Cathay Pacific, so it only flies to/from HKG, but is considered to be an entirely different airline in BA’s system. Because of this chart, if you book a Dragonair flight using Avios, your options are: 1) Pay a ton of Avios to continue to some Cathay* destination. 2) Continue your journey to another Dragonair destination. 3) Book seperate Dragonair and Cathay* reservations with a lot of time in between them, and force a stopover in HKG. 4)… Read more »
@Pat – I wonder how this one works, for instance Cathay + Dragonair NYC-HKG-PVG prices 42,500 the same as all AA or all BA. So maybe certain Cathay + Dragonair fares/routings/regions are considered one carrier and others are not? Which ones caused you this?
My issue was for DAD-HKG-NRT; 1st leg on Dragonair, 2nd on Cathay. Da Nang isn’t a valid airport on the BA site, so I had to book over the phone. This booking occurred last July, and perhaps BA has corrected the situation since then.