Meh. By the same token, it could read:

'Record profitable airline can't pass up opportunity to profit off distressed passenger under extenuating circumstances'.

AC is perfectly entitled to ask for a death certificate, but let's not pretend that changing the seat actually costs anywhere close to whatever AC T&C wants for it. The fare difference is paid in addition to the change fee although we can challenge the merit of that difference too - there's no way anyone can know that the last unsold seat will sell at X price point until it's actually sold; the opportunity cost is hypothetical until then. Evidently, the pax here is not asking for a free seat; he's already paid for one that they can now resell to offset the hypothetical opportunity cost. And the circumstances are unique insofar as individuals tend to die exactly once.

There's a reason airlines like WS get away with frankly absurd situations like the LGW ops disaster; we both know how much flack AC would have taken in the same scenario. IMHO, it's down to how well (or not) the public perceives airlines as treating them. This story reinforces the perception (justified or not) that AC could care less about screwing over distressed pax. Want to know why? Because all anyone has to do is think about how they would have felt under the same circumstances, and, equally, how they themselves would have dealt with the situation if they themselces were the service provider. Reason and empathy, not rocket science.

It only goes downhill from there, regardless of what the T&C says. Not that the T&C are beyond reproach, as we found out with IDB. But I digress.

All in all, completely avoidable.