Summary

I have an award ticket booked IAD - LHR/LGW - VCE // DBV - LGW/LHR - EWR next July. The originally booked LHR - EWR flight was been cancelled and my arrival time was moved from 1 pm to about 7 pm. I tried to move to an earlier LHR - JFK flight and was told that they would need to due an involuntary change into a revenue class. Further, any future voluntary changes would require that all segments were currently available in a award class (fat chance). Since I want to eventually rebook to the final segment to LHR - IAD, I am now stuck with the later segment.

Does this sound right? I hope that better flights will open, but these new flights aren't minimally acceptable as we need to get our car from IAD and pick up our daughter in WV by 10 am the next day.