Thank you kindly both for your responses. Will speak to Finnair now and hope for a nice exit row seat :)

FOC = Free Of Charge in this context.

another wrinkle, I just checked, and I booked this with Avios. Since the problem is due to schedule change can BA still shoehorn me into an AY J seat even if there's no J award avail? They said they cannot rebook me on a non-BA flight. HUCA?

award availability will be controlled by AY. It won't be BA's call. Helpful BA agent might be able to send a message to AY to see if their revenue management can open a space but that is the most they can do. You can ask first. But personally I doubt it. Yet it is so far away AY may just agree to open one seat as AY often operate widebodies to LHR nowadays.

as of now looks like i'm stuck on that 7:55am out of LHR :(

Sadly that 7:55am is the only BA operated LHR-HEL flight that day, so I guess i'm stuck.

I just did this for my LHR-HEL flights that were brought forward by over 3 hours. No problem over the phone. It did mean swapping CE seats for AY A359/A333 though!

Just had a change on a Sunday, was on BA1394 LHR-MAN at 13.05, new flight BA1398 at 17.35 so will now have a layover approaching 6 hours after landing from Rio! Can't see any alternative flights :-(

Another change MAN-LHR on a Saturday in Nov. First flight to LHR is now 09.45AM. So I now have 25 mins connection to my flight to RIO. What a mess. All I can do is change my travel from weekends to weekdays.. Shame on BA for disrupting travel from the regions that was booked in good faith.

Has anyone pushed the point and got anywhere? https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb...lines#schedule says

This is pretty clear in saying " If total delay is more than 120 minutes, lowest class available in the same cabin can be used" which suggests no redemption availability needed for a delay? But does it also apply for an early departure?

Cauchy, I believe you are correct. I looked it up too 18 months or so back. According to what rules I could see there was no specific restriction in BAEC or CoC to avios only bookings. I was GGL at the time and queried it. I did get something in writing from BAEC which confirmed their position in my specific case (although my request they quote the specific paragraph and rule wasn't met).
However, coincidentally, an alternative direct routing came up via a schedule change, wholly on BA metal. So I called back and requested the re-route and it was granted; I even got some avios back.
As things worked out I didn't press the re-booking shenanigans ... I've now diversified away from avios on North American routes because of this, amongst other things, and the AA/BA propensity for awkward schedule changes.

Bringing this thread back because I finally got to chat to BA about it. BA said that it's not possible to rebook me on a non-BA operated flight although it's a pure cash booking. HUCA?

My flight was the LHR-HEL 11.10 flight, moved me to 07:55 and I'm trying to rebook to 10:20 or 13:50 AY codeshare. Return flight has been changed from 17:00 to 13:50!!! This trip has been an absolute nightmare so far, my AY flights all had schedule changes as well so I had to reroute IVL-HEL-LHR to RVN-HEL-LHR and the day after my AY rebooking BA decides to do this to me..... :rolleyes:

I am afraid what you have been told is rubbish, see posts 3 and 6, as this is a joint business route with AY rebooking from BA to AY if your time change is more than 120 minutes should be fine. I have been rebooked to AY and so have a few others on this thread. Probably best to try again.