I'm pretty sure this is a stupid question, but my wife insists on having the answer:

In March we are flying to PVG. She's been periodically snooping our flight to see about fare changes. She's been happy because the day after we booked it jumped up nearly $100/ticket. Now, however, it's offering a ticket for something like $100 less. The departure isn't quite as nice but the return saves a hop and something like 5 hours of wait time.

Obviously they opened up some tickets in a lower fare bucket on the direct route home.

There isn't anything practical we can do to take advantage of this is there? (We are currently both GMs.) It would be nice to reroute that last leg even if we didn't get back the fare difference.

You would have to pay the change fee (probably $250) plus the fare difference to change your flight. So even if the fare dropped $100, you would still have to pay $150 to change it.

Other than paying for a ticket change, which assume is not in the cards, hope for a schedule change with a significant change in times (2 hours is the rule, but sometimes a smaller change will work). If there is a schedule change you can attempt to get a modified routing for free.

You can hope, but with the flight less than a month away, that's pertty unlikely to happen.

It's up to $250 now?! Last I knew it was $150!

I didn't think there was anything that could be reasonably done but she wasn't willing to accept my answer.

As for the other posters--no schedule change in the original.

$150 domestic, $250 international (for tickets originating in the US)

What is the change fee for tickets originating in other countries?

LOL, yeah, that was exactly my reaction when I changed an international flight 3 months ago. Complete RIP-OFF!
Wives!

There is no one answer. All change fees depend on the fare rules for a given fare basis.

They vary based on fare-rules, but usually its at least $150 for domestic and $250 for INTL. Been that way for a while.

Those are the maxima (as far as I've ever seen), not the minima.

Well, unless you are on a Z fare, for example, which often carries a $400 change fee!

As others have said, it varies. The fee is priced in the currency of the originating airport. Typical values for discounted coach fares are GBP 100, EUR 100, JPY 25000.

Where "international" means "outside region 1."