An UpdAAte:

So our flight did cancel, and we were rebooked on a direct flight that WAS operating. I didn't have much fight left in me and I felt the accommodation was fair (if not ideal), so I left it at that.

Was set to leave Monday, but with the strike going in full force, my SO made the case that we should try once again to not fly during the strike. A handful of the comments here notwithstanding, the majority of the reviews in this thread over on the BA forum were not positive. It was clear BA and its staff were bending over backwards to keep the airline afloat, but particularly in F the experience was really lacking.

BA's 'You First' hotline said to call AA, and the calls to AA were not helpful. From AA's perspective, they'd done everything they should (and I **do** understand that). I threw in the towel, but the SO pushed for one more call to You First.

Somehow we FINALLY got someone who just got it. He got that we didn't want to fly 15 hours in F with cold meals, cheap alcohol and skeleton crews. He got that we didn't want to be reaccommodated on AA. Then, he said something I've never heard from an airline before, "Just leave this with me. I'll call you back when I've got a solution. Despite all the rhetoric about only AA can make changes, he was able to change our flights and called back 20 minutes later.

We did have to put in another call to AA to change the connecting flights on Jet. The AAgent also "got it." She saw what BA had done, she was able to coordinate with the Oneworld desk to update our reservation, and she was able to make the changes. I was so impressed, I emailed her supervisor.

Moral of the story: As Blumie says, "Codeshares suck." To be clear, American did everything they reasonably should be required to do, give the circumstances. But our requests were also reasonable, and had we been flying wholly on one airline there would have been no problem accommodating our wants. And one last shoutout to the fantastic BAgent and AAgent... good customer service is worth the world.