Originally Posted by
Mike Jacoubowsky
Since it (apparently) requires existence of the same fare bucket, day of flight, that you had previously booked into, it's likely to be seen more by the YBM folk, and almost never by someone booking into K, S, T or L. I'm thinkin'.
Absolutely not. Unless the flight is extremely full (~Y2 or less in my experience) all of the fare buckets will re-open close to departure, anywhere from a few days out to 3 hours out (even if they were previously gone),
specifically for SDC. Remember, these are restricted fares, so you can't generally buy them at that point.
I hardly ever fly on YBM fares these days, and almost always have a range of flights to choose from on SDC. Most recently I changed a Sunday 9pm DEN-ORD G fare (~$65 one way) to an earlier flight, and I had 5 flights to choose from.
It really is only on the very full flights that you don't get offered SDC, even in low fare classes.