I want to thank the OP for this thread.
My wife and I have been looking for a flight for about a week with lots of close calls but no winners. I have amex points that I have to use. We wanted to fly us air. We called us air and found the flight. We then called British air to try to book it. No joy. They said that although us air had seats available, they weren't made available to British air to sell.
This meant we had to buy the tickets for cash and then pay down the card with points, or transfer amex points to spg then to us air. We would have had to transfer 174,800 points the spg way or paid down the card using 138,800.
The obvious decision was made to pay cash. When we went to purchase the tickets, the flight had no availability. I should mention at this point we had about 10 hrs worth of research into it. Flights would have availability and then be gone. We thought we had a way to buy the tickets and then we didn't. At one point us air quoted us 140,000 for the two tickets, it looked like without having a credit card that transferred directly to us air that it was going to cost is a bundle. That was until I found this thread.
Post #1- login into your British air executive acct. choose search using avois points. Pick flight. $22 and 108,000 points later, we have the flight we're looking for.
Thanks!