<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Spider:
My return portion was to start from HEL on 20th at around 7am with a flight to CDG connecting to AA flight to BOS.
The problem lies with the 20 minute connecting flight that I had to take to HEL to connect to my Paris flight and which was not an award but a full fare 'Y' flight. On the ticket it said that I had to check in 35 minutes prior to the flight which left at 6.20am. When I arrived at the airport at 5.40 there was an unexpected substantial queue at biz check-in counter. Reached the counter at 6am, agent looks at the ticket and starts the check-in. Then I ask if I could check my luggage in all the way through to Boston, agent stops, looks at my onward tickets and says "Oh, an award flight...". Then he says that the flight is closed and I better go to the ticket counter and find an alternative flight. 
To cut the long story short, I ended up taking the ferry to HEL and missing my flight to Paris and Boston.</font>
GB, it wasn't a 20-minute connection time in HEL, it was a 20-minute flying-time from somewhere (maybe Talinn) to HEL. The problem is he missed the first flight, which left on time and would have made the connection to Paris just fine. Neither airline is on the hook for any compensation. I agree that taking the 40,000 miles is the best that can happen (in fact AA is being somewhat generous in doing this, I've had missed flights before when it was my fault and the airline offered no compensation).
I guess the lesson is that 30 minutes isn't enough time to check-in at even the smallest airport. Particularly when you have one flight a day (I suppose AA would have rebooked the award flight for next-day travel, as an alternative to buying the Finnair ticket).