Not only that, but why bother flying AC at all? SDC and standby used to be a competitive advantage for AC vs WS, which is somewhere between a joke and a nightmare when it comes to those things. I believe the US3 all have much better SDC options now than AC too.

Standby has been neutered since the Amadeus transition, and now they've significantly reduced the benefit of SDC.

In the past, I've definitely picked AC many times when its price was worse, knowing that SDC or standby would likely help me get a better route, but if I'm stuck with whatever flights I originally booked, AC's value proposition is meaningfully worse.