Originally Posted by srieppo

Well this messed up our trip to Japan. It was already very uncertain will Japan reopen for tourists, but now AY canceled our HEL-KIX flights and did not offer any alternative flights. They also canceled NRT-HEL but those they moved us to another flight later that day. We had award flights. I called the plat line about it. There is a flight to Tokyo for the day before, but she said they can't put us on that flight, because there is no reward availability, in fact the flight is almost fully booked.

Is this really legal? Shouldn't EU261 apply here, they must reroute us if we want to, even using another airline? The clear thing would be to move us to the HEL-NRT flight the day before and then fly us with JAL to KIX.

The operator wasn't willing to discuss rerouting, said it does not apply to reward flights and because it is over 14 days to the flight. The only option was to change the dates and that is subject to reward availability, which there is not with so few flights and also I believe they are not flying full planes because of the long distance.