Changing the day of a flight
 

It appears the standard fee of the major American airlines for changing the day of a flight is $200, although exceptions exist such as Alaska sixty days before departure. How do you generally deal with this situation?

(1) on AS, maintain MVPG status because they waive the change fee even within 60 days
(2) hope for a schedule change of >60-90 min or a change of operating carrier; this generally allows for either a full refund or a one-time change (individual airline policy may limit the change to travel on the same route/date, but may give some flexibility such as alternate airport or +/- one day)
(3) hope for weather disruption or other IROPS conditions which also frequently give a lot of leeway in terms of refund or re-routing
(4) otherwise book refundable tix

Or fly Southwest, which only charges the fare difference*, but no change fee.
Otherwise, suck it up and pay.

Note that refundable tickets tend to be much more expensive than non-refundable, maybe more than the change fee. If your plans are shaky and you think you may change multiple times, refundable/fully flexible is the way to go. If they're pretty set, it may still be cheaper to buy the non-refundable fare and change once, or even twice.

*Pretty much every airline in the US charges a fare difference, although not all charge a change fee.

Free SDC on United (if you are Gold or above) - I've been able to delay flights by several days using this. Can't move flights forward more than a day though, and doesn't work too well for infrequent (daily) routes.

If you think you're going to be changing the dates of your flights, your best bet is Southwest (since you're asking about U.S. carriers...).

If you need a legacy carrier, I know AA sells a no-change-fee add on to most fares. They bundle it with a lot of the basic elite benefits, so if you're already elite it's not a particularly good value. (If you *aren't* elite, then it depends on how much you value the elite benefits.) But it's definitely better than buying a fully-refundable ticket, as long as you're fairly certain you *will* eventually fly.

IIRC JetBlue is pretty generous too. A long time ago I messed up the return date on a JetBlue flight and the change fee was $25. Not sure if that's still the case.

Good point. But if you accept such a change, are you allowed once again a 24 hour window of undo?

:p
nice try, but it's not a new purchase, so the 24-hr provision doesn't apply