Under these new rules, is "departure date" the date of the first leg of a ticket, or is it the date of any individual leg? For example, if you are on a roundtrip ticket flying leg 1 on October 1 and leg 2 on October 10, and after departing per schedule on October 1 you decide you want to come back on October 9 instead, will this change still be allowed (by paying the change fee)? The wording gets a little tricky here, because "after the departure date" you can't do anything with regard to changes other than stand by on the same day that travel was booked (by paying the $100 standby fee).
If "after the departure date" means any date after the date of the first leg of the ticket, then it sounds like the return leg of a roundtrip ticket must be on the date booked and changing the return date of a ticket won't be allowed any longer.
I may be being too picky here (and a bit paranoid), but I'm concerned that the only way to change a ticket (by paying the $100 change fee) is to change it before any leg is flown, and that beyond that the only option for a variance will be standing by for a different flight on the same day that travel was originally booked, but never ever being able to actually change a return date once travel has commenced. Perhaps everyone else has already recognized this as fact, but I had not. It seems like the entire uproar has been over paying $100 just to standby, but if they're removing any option to change the return date after travel has commenced, then I think that's an even bigger change than the new standby charge.