AF Rebooking Discount Glitch?
 

I was surprised to have stumbled across this today while making a change to a booking I had previously made. Essentially, I was able to "rebook" onto the same flight I was originally on for a reduced price. Naturally, this should only work if the price you originally paid for a leg was higher than the one currently offered. In my case this was a MUC-CDG round trip, originally Jan 5 - Jan 17. I wanted to change the inbound leg to Jan 18, so I started the rebooking process in the AF app. It asked me which (or both) of the two legs I wanted to change, and I selected both as I was curious about the other flights on Jan 5. When the flights for Jan 5 came up, I saw my original flight listed as "-$14". I selected this, and proceeded to pick a flight on Jan 18. Due to timing constraints, I had to pick one that was "+$10", but this still produced a net total of -$4 of a change fee. The rebooking went through, and I was emailed, telling me that my $4 refund was on the way. This is major news if it works across the board, as you could "rebook" yourself onto lower fares on the same flights. Since the trip length changed from 12 to 13 days, I can't imagine that a lower fare was triggered due to MSR. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I didn"t try myself but you could also cancel the ticket get the voucher and rebook with the voucher which will result in the creation of a new voucher with the fare difference.
I do not think it was possible to do it a few months ago as I remember I tried, but for AF it saves ressources from the booking center.

Nice find. It does require a very special set of circumstances, but could be useful. Take advantage of it while you can! ;) Please do report back if you do actually receive a refund for that fare difference.

The method mentioned by @pascalgr definitely works. I had to rebook an AF fare last month where the total fare of the original ticket plus the fare difference would be more than the fare of a new booking. Booked the new flight, and requested a refund for the old one. Received the voucher not long after.

Fares change all the time. Demand is lower than expected due to Omnicron.

There's no glitch. You simply rebooked at current prices. Always has been possible. However as change fees were more than the savings from rebooking, no one did it. (In most cases) No change fees means There's nothing to prevent rebooking for lower cost.

I'm pretty sure that rebooking for lower cost didnt used to be possible though. Definitely rebooking into a lower fare class didnt used to be possible.

Yes was entirely possible. Just as stated it didn't happen often as change fee charged was more than any drop in fare.

Example paid $500 for ticket. Fare drops $100. You could rebook ticket for $400. However there was a change fee of $200. Rebooking to $400 fare thus meant you lost $100. Thus no one did it.

There's no more change fees. Thus rebooking to the $400 fare no longer costs you $100, rather saves you $100.