Originally Posted by
The Lev
I believe most airlines have similar policies. As to why - simple answer is because they make up the rules so they can.
I'm purely speculating but the rationale might go something like this. You want flexibility on your trip - then we want the customer to buy Latitude, even if they only need the flexibility for part of the trip. I suppose it is their idea of revenue maximisation.
I find this incredibly frustrating too, but I can understand why - the alternative would enable all kinds of ways to game the system. For example, T+ transatlantic to some destinations still requires a Saturday stay (don't even get me started on this one...). If you bought T+ outbound on Monday, L return on Sunday, then you could change the L to Friday and get around the Saturday stay rule. More generally, you could game seat sale restrictions in the same way. And you can be sure that there would be an FT sticky on all the possible variations