Yes, absolutely.

I believe this is mainly due to the fact that most foreign countries have ONE mainline carrier. I.e British Airways in Britain, Lufthansa in Germany, Air France in France, Austalia has Qantas..etc...this is a very different situation to the US where we have the "Big 6". i.e AA,UA,US,NW,CO,and DL.

Although discount carriers have been growing over the last few years, the main line carriers can operate very differently in other countries where they are virtually the only one, than a mainline carrrier here.

I think most people consider this quite normal and do not necessarily feel disadvantaged. I moved to the US from Europe a year ago and was extremely surprised that people were actually griping about a change fee for a deep discount Y ticket. I always felt it was absolutely normal and perfectly acceptable to not be able to change a discount Y ticket, i.e. "use it or lose" is fine, after all thats why you have the advantage of buying such a cheap ticket.

In summary, air travellers here are extremely spoiled in a lot of aspects. Once you have experienced air travel elsewhere for a few years one realises how accomadating the airlines here really are



[This message has been edited by JohnG (edited 10-20-2003).]