OK, thank you all for the info.
S.o.S. I'm retired now and make about one or maybe two trips a year. I left the flying to mrs radeng, and she retired as of last Saturday night. But they asked to her to do 30 hours spread over 3 months as a contractor. So far, bookings for her for that are two separate one week trips to Penang and two separate three day trips to Norway and two days of running an on-line training next week!
There's an interesting point on the transatlantic flights. Because American's First Class is crap compared with BA F class, one can choose a code share, book with American get American FF miles - which are far more use than the crappy BA Avios - and actually travel on BA. Thus the AA6216 from PHL to LHR is operated as BA0068. So who is the responsible operator under EU261? It is probably an IB flight as well....
I'll ask AA for the fare difference and suggest some miles would be nice - after all, I have been a 'million miler' Gold Card holder since sometime last century, so I might get away with it!