My girlfriend has a ticket to fly from Oviedo, Spain to Bradley, CT on July 12 (OVD-MAD-EWR-BDL). It cost approx $800.

She'd like to change it to fly on July 4, 5, or even 6. She could fly from OVD or MAD to either BDL, or even BOS (logan).

She called continental for the change. No problem, they said. It'd just be the difference in price of the new ticket Vs. old, plus a $250 fee.

The only problem is that the ticket that she paid $800 for is now about $2000, so its over $1200 to change! Needless to say, that's prohibitively expensive.

So, any advice on how we might be able to make this work, and not have to pay an arm and a leg for it? Any loopholes that we might not know about?

It seems to me that since the ticket that she's holding has also increased in value that it'd be more fair of them to credit the new value, but I guess that's not how it works!

(prob unrelated, longshot: I did find that there's an Aer Lingus flight from MAD to BOS on July 6 for $815. No way to swap that for the Continental ticket, right? She bought the tix on expedia, which is where I found it.)