Originally Posted by NickB

You cannot generalise. Policies are all over the place. BA and IB now seem to allow changes on basic fares intra-Europe without fee (just fare difference). LH's economy light is, like AF, not changeable and non-refundable. Many are changeable for a fee (LCCs usually follow that approach). I don't think that there is an overwhelming case for saying that one strategy is clearly the best one for all airlines in all situations. We would have to dig into number to have more of a sense of that, numbers that most of us do not have.