Don't know when it started, and of course it's not written down anywhere so they can make it up as they go along....

...but if you want to go standby on an earlier flight, there's now a $50+tax fee, for both econo and business class awards. Given that you can go confirmed for only $55+tax, what's the point.

Ah well, the several phone agents and couple of check-in agents actually did me a favour, as the all the XM'd 767 flights magically changed through the day to all economy seating 767s.

(Which I guess means it doesn't matter how many XM'd planes are scheduled for a given day, at least on YVR-YYZ and back your odds of getting a non-XM seat are still much greater.)