Gosh, it wouldn't surprise me if this wasn't a glitch. These sorts of antics really seem to be in line with where they're headed these days. That said, their system has seemingly be down every few days, so maybe there's just some IT disaster happening behind the scenes we don't know about.

They've already quietly added a $40-50 "other ATC" surcharge with any use of a companion fare in the fall-ish of 2022. They've been notorious for hiding absurd amounts of base fare in "other ATC" for many, many years. I remember fares to LGW, when first introduced, were like $800, with only $20 being "base fare" eligible for WSD application. I guess some of it is a product of them being unable to devalue their own rewards program, since 1 WSD = 1 CAD.