Has anyone booked international AA travel using British Air miles?
 

I have a ton of miles on BA, but am put off by the high taxes and surcharges. I was under the impression you could book on AA also. My one phone attempt with BA was met with a very uncooperative agent who seemed unwilling to help me do this. No surprise. But has anyone had success doing this?

I believe the carrier is determined by the destination and if BA goes where you want to go then they'll book you on BA. If you have a route in mind that BA doesn't fly but AA does then you can book on AA. I don't believe you can choose airline, just destination.

You can easily book award travel on AA using BA miles (now called avios points) online. Depending upon the itinerary, you will be given the choice to search for award tix on American, Aer Lingus and/or Iberia as well as BA.

I believe you will find that the taxes, fees, etc are virtually identical however. Travel on BA, however, may require fewer points. I made dummy searches for January award travel to Paris:

Using BA, the cost was 52,000 avios (miles) + $583.50 taxes/fees.
Using AA, the cost was 55,000 avios + $577.28 taxes/fees.
Using Iberia, the cost was 70,000 avios + $562.56 taxes/fees.

To clarify, the above was all on BA.com

Julie, that is so nice of you, thank you very much! BA doesn't fly out of my home city, but AA does, so it would be helpful to use that airline. I'm surprised at the high fees - it seems sometimes you could almost book a flight not using miles for that amount of money.

Sorry, I meant Julia, not Julie!

My wife and I got 2 AAdvantage AA.com cards 80000 AA points booked out TA flights closed the cards.We have done 6 TA
flights with ba.com in the past over 400000 points they hammered us with bogus surcharges for fuel and seats we
ended up paying hundreds more but was still a good deal.
We have tried to switch them over to AA no luck in the past.
Might look at AAdvantage cards worked great for us.

we booked our MOB DFW PAR RT for April May 2012 20000/leg
plus under $50/leg tax free fuel and seats a heck of a deal
compared to BA.So for 2 RT 80000 AA points $95 each tax that
was it.

I believe it depends more on the destination than the airline as many of the fees are imposed by the counties one goes in & out of. There was talk on the various forums a while back about huge fees for using Heathrow while I booked a 1 way flight using miles to Paris and was charge $5. I was astonished. So try varying the city and see if the fees aren't much reduced for some.

One advantage of using American is that you can book 1 way fares. This year I was returning by ship so that was very useful and in 2010 went in to Rome early in the spring for fewer miles and then home from Heathrow. I believe other airlines would have simply charged miles at the higher return (June) rate for the entire intinerary.