wetrat0

I'm surprised only one person has brought this up. More and more, BE is available on every route and is the default shown on sites like Google flights. That is to say, a typical non-elite customer buying the cheapest available coach ticket already has a non-changeable-at-any-cost ticket.

This is not news from Parker. The legacy industry is already moving in this direction. To me the question is not whether the big 3 will follow (they already have for BE), but whether WN will follow. WN is already popular among business travelers who do a lot of short haul (and thus value upgrades less) because they can make unlimited free changes. My guess is that if WN keeps free changes then big 3 will limit this to BE. If WN eliminates free changes, I would expect the big 3 to roll this out to all discount coach tickets.