OnePassLover: I actually found the 14.2 rule that you cut and pasted in your above post while going thru BA's rules and terms the other night, that's what prompted my original email to BA in the first place. I was hoping that with the rules revamped that the unbelievable "14.2 Flight bookings for Award travel on Airline Partners cannot be changed, Awards cannot be reissued or Mileage refunded" was a big mistake that had accidently slipped thru the cracks and that nobody at BA had caught it yet to remove it from the rules.

If 14.2 is actually true then this has huge implications, for example if I want to use BA miles on a partner airline say on a popular route and/or during a holiday season and to to ensure that I'm able to grab one of the limited # of seats allocated for FF travel I have to book about a year ahead of time does this mean that my travel dates are set in CONCRETE with absolutely no chance to change them whatsover - not even by paying a change fee - come h*ll or high water?

That's why I emailed BA in the first place, so that I could have a WRITTEN ruling that I could reference in the future should the need arise instead of getting a verbal ruling from a phone representative. That way if they do say "sorry but your award ticket that you have in hand is unchangable" we can in turn reply, "I was told by your rep that it was indeed changable and here is their email in black in white to prove it."