Originally Posted by mherdeg

Despite flight being V5 W3, the change-flights link offered to let me change my 4-passenger trip into W fare class. The change was completed successfully and we ended up with a 4-pax reservation in W. The flight was W0 afterwards.

I wasn't quite sure what was going on here, but it felt like United inventory was stretching a little and offering me the cheaper fare class on a multi-passenger itinerary. Without actually changing anything about the way multi-passenger airline records universally work, I still got a nice deal from United offering me a little extra flexibility. No idea how that happened but I was grateful. I wonder whether this was a real-life example of creatively implementing the kind of flexibility txp is wondering about in this thread.