Originally Posted by
uanj
I recently changed an international ticket with the fare basis outside the U.S. Got a good agent who found the dates I needed and at a cost lower than the original fee + change fee.
She agreed with me that it is strange more and more foreign based fares have change fees or are not even changeable. Not just Asia but she is seeing some out of the UK. The opposite of where UA has said they want to go, at least for US based fares.
UA has always delineated the ‘no change fees’ for US-originating fares. While it’s been pretty typical to see no change fees for ex-International flights, UA has always, since they started the ‘no change fees’ marketing, always specified ex-US (and not applicable to BE fares).
the rules are often (though not always), competition-based. So you’re more likely to see change fees on routes where the competition uses them. I will agree it’s typically a competitive advantage to have them though, and helpful to use on codeshares/partner flights where the partner charges them. For AC, for example, UA often (though not always) competes with AC on regular fares that are equal to AC ‘standard’ family fares. Booking standard fares on AC is subject to change fees, while the non-basic, non-refundable UA fares are not. To ‘upgrade’ to an AC flex fare, which is the lowest Transborder AC fare class that allows no-fee changes, is often +$100 each direction.