Several weeks ago I booked a F award on LX from HKG to ZRH. It took a couple of hours (call back in 2 hours for taxes to load, sorry not loaded yet call back, sorry computer down call back...). But ticket was issued and I called LX for seat assignment 2D. No problem, I could check everything on checkmytrip.
Today I was casually looking on EF and found that an additional award seat opened on my flight. I looked at the seat map and sicovered that my 2D seat was now free. I called LX and the lady told me that my ticket had been cancelled a week ago. She said that the departure time from HKG had been advanced by 6 minutes (same arrival time) and that led automaticallly to the cancellation of my ticket. She told me to call back BD to reissue the ticket. I call from overseas (vacation in Greece) so that is not cheap. Indeed checkmytrip showed that my ticket had been cancelled. The BD agent was very kind and efficient and LUCKILY the award seat had not been grabbed by someone else. I called LX to get the same seat. So everything is back in order, but I am so lucky that I happened to look at EF.
It appears that the standard procedure is that LX notifies the ticketing agent (BD) and if the time change is not accepted cancel the ticket. I received no email notification from BD (although they have my address and send confirmations there). It seems astounding that a ticket gets cancelled for a six-minute departing time change! It could be that the problem was that my HKG flight was initially scheduled to depart at 00:05 and got changed to 23:59 the day before. But that is still shocking.
My question to the board is whether this is common. I am very worried cos LX could decide to change back to 00:01 and my ticket will get cancelled again without any notification.