Unfortunately this illustrates the problem when pax dont fully understand what date changeable means , back when I was in the industry I used to carefully brief my customers that date changeable really meant date changeable if and only if a seat in that particular fare bucket was available on the flight they wanted , and , of course if that is not fully explained to pax they are not surprisingly frustrated when they find that they do not have quite the flexibility they expected ( this is also a reason why I used to discourage pax who wanted to ticket with opendated sectors - what happens when you are ready to book but there are absolutely no seats at all in the required fare bucket , not only on your preferred date , but for several weeks either side ) .

Like it or not LONEs are low yield fares as far as the airlines are concerned ( I know that when one pays the price of an LONEx it seems a long way from low yield , but potentially the yield per sector can be horrific from the individual carriers point of view) and if the fare bucket you want is not available the airline is under no obligation to open one up for you .