Thanks everyone. My friend, instead of trying to cancel outright, found some alternate dates that worked for him so he called to see how to change those dates (instead of the cancellation I had posted about). He says:

I got a very sweet lady in ATL on the Elite member line....and she changed everything....no fee...just warned me that they can't always be this nice. I had to use the original schedule change as the change reasons. She didn't want to mess up my holiday. ;0 So my hats are off to Delta. This isn't the first time they've bent the rules slightly for customer satisfaction. I don't think I would have gotten away with this on AA. BA...definitely not


He wasn't even assessed a fare difference since she was able to do it under the original schedule change! Some great CS by Delta.