60 day free changes
 

I went to change a reservation today (I wanted to change the return leg, 60+ days out) and was told that because the 1st leg is less than 60 days, the change fee applies. When did this change? I have a tweet from Alaska from a few years back over exactly the same thing, and at the time they said "60 days from the leg you want to change"

Was kind of a long conversation with the agent, as at first she didn't want to allow an open jaw on a companion cert, and then tried to claim it wasn't a valid open jaw (it was). She waived one of the two change fees, but I always thought that the 60+ was from the day of the flight you wanted to change.

I believe the fare rules dictate that it is 60 days prior to the first leg of the FARE you are changing. A round trip would be two fares; while a oneway with a stopover would be one fare.

I’m not totally sure because most of my domestic travel is booked as two separate one-ways.

All AS fares are OW. You could have booked 2 x OW all along. I would escalate to a supervisor and ask that they waive this.

From the detailed fare rules of a ticket I just purchased:
It seems pretty clear to me that that's 60 days before the segment, not 60 days before the first leg of the fare, unless there's some weirdness about a cancellation fee being different than a change fee. But it sure looks to me like the OP was wrongly charged.

With the caveat about any stopovers that sturges mentioned.

Hopefully @missydarlin will step in with the official stance.

It's hard to answer fully without seeing the reservation, but in general, unless it is somehow tied to the previous segment as a connection, it should be 60 days from the ticketed flight you are trying to change.

Thanks for the answer @missydarlin

Without quoting the exact reservation....
Outbound Apr 13 YVR-SEA-BWI
Original Return Apr 26 BWI-SEA-YVR

The latter is what I changed (to Apr 28 SAT-SEA-YVR), and despite that being > 60 days, I was charged a change fee.... The agent kept saying that because the Apr 13 date was less than 60, I'd have to pay the change fee, despite my wanting to change a Apr 26 reservation

Wonder if there is something weird going on with taxes as its no longer returning to Canada triggering different add collects/refunds?

It's worth following up with Customer Care.

Done and solved. Thanks.