Hi Everyone, I just wanted to make you aware of some changes that we’ll be making to our policy for same-day changes (SDCs). We’ll be implementing changes to this policy in two different stages between now and the next couple months. There are some positives to come, however, for now effective immediately, the fee for same-day confirmed changes on restricted tickets within 3 hours of departure will increase to $50.

Late next month, we’ll be announcing some more changes to this program – including some benefits you’ve been asking for. I wish I could be more detailed about what’s coming, but unfortunately I can’t for competitive reasons.

A little bummed about the fee increase but hopefully it will be made up with some good benefits to come.

Looks like CO is playing catch-up to the DL and UA fee increases. Beats bankruptcy in the end..

Hopefully the SDC window will be extended to the calendar day or 24 hours which could make that $50 change fee worthwhile..

hopefully a benefit will be discounted or no fee for an elite level. On UA, I've taken advantage of changing flights without a fee as a 1K.

It' still a sellers market so CO can hose people wherever possible. But come late August - Christmas, CO will be begging for passengers to fly them, as it turns very quickly to a buyers market

This is marginally tolerable as long as the standard change fee doesn't go up to $150 to follow in UA's footsteps (right off the cliff). $150 is flat-out absurd and borderline extortion.

I realize it's an extremely difficult environment to compete, but all the nickel-and-diming is not what Continental is about.

Something's gotta give...

There are two aspects to this that would make it worthwhile for us:

1. As Lurker suggested, expanding the window so that we could plan better.
2. Clarifying and allowing the use of 'normal' alternate routing and Fare Class changes.

As an example, we have seats on CO816 EWR-MSY tomorrow. It's the last flight of the day, and is almost guaranteed to be late which means that we don't get to our home until at least 1AM CDT. Our schedule for tomorrow opened up and we would like to go earlier but: The other 2 daily nonstops 716 and 516 are both Full (Coach & FC) so they aren't an option for standby. We could catch an earlier flight EWR-IAH and then IAH - EWR, where there are plenty of available midday seats on both segments but, as I've learned from experience, I'll get a really hard time and won't be successful because its a different route than we're ticketed and the seats, while open, probably aren't available in the same class. I wouldn't mind paying the $50 for a seat that's going to fly empty without me and that would open up a seat you might sell on a later non-stop. So instead of a win-win, we end up with a lose-lose situation.

There's certainly no point in our going to EWR at 5:00 AM for a possilble 6:55 AM Standby when we might not get out until our original schedule of 8:05 PM. If we could make a call tonight and have something set for tomorrow, we'd gladly pay the $50.

do you mean that the summer is a busy travel season and the fall/winter will be a slow period worsened by the recession/slow economy?

while i agree, carriers are yanking domestic capacity...so your theory might not hold up.

Yea right.....I paid the $25 a few times but the chances that I'll pay $50 are slim to none...hope this works out for them.

We'll see. You're far more optimistic than I am....I predict that when push comes to shove CO will fall in line with the change fee of $150

I assume you can still standby for no fee - same day travel.

I've heard nothing about that changing.

CO keeps encouraging me to buy Y - sigh

I think that's their thought too. Ticket prices/revenue must go up in order for the surviving airlines to stay solvent.

I agree. Much like the $25 extra bag fee is just going to encourage the nuclear family to carry on 4 rollaboards, not actually reduce fuel costs and not actually raise that much in revenue (probably not even enough to offset the problems it will cause at the gates), this change will merely mean that on those occasions when I would have ponied up the $25 bucks in the past (which were rare, I admit), I'll now be SBY.

I paid the $25 fee before just to get put on the first class standby list in time for a gate upgrade, but $50 is more than I would be willing to spend for a better seat in coach and a chance for an upgrade. With the higher fee I'll just go with standby. Hopefully as someone else mentioned above this higher fee will be waived for Platinum similar to UA with 1k's.