Thanks, Olivia. I had suspected the taxes and fees to be based flying BA using AA miles, however, wasn't entirely certain, so I posed the question. You and a private email from Wes (thanks, Wes) have now confirmed it. We did experience the 24 hour seat selection on our trip to Provence a few years ago. We were out and about and had to stop into an internet cafe to snag our seats. A major inconvenience and PITA! We may need to do a mix of one way AA award seats and one way MP award seats for this trip.

We used MP for our Bus Class award seats with Lufthansa for this year's trip. An absolute "bargain" compared to BA fees!

Thanks, again, for your reply.