well, I will be in the minority and agree with the folks that expect a reasonable fee for a flight change
Everyone believes that. The disagreement is with regard to what is reasonable. AFAIC, whatever someone agrees to in advance, is therefore reasonable. What I see as unreasonable is saying, "Yes, okay, your terms are acceptable," and then complaining about the terms afterwards. It is disingenuous behavior,
by definition.
I see airlines shoot themselves in the foot by ...
There is no way for us to know. Managing a business requires not only experience, but data about markets, customers, etc. Reading these forums is an eye-opener, sometimes, because of how often people assert that "logically" X should equal Y, when in reality, X and Y are independent variables affected by a multitude of factors, and could therefore be the same, one greater than the other, or vice versa. We can speculate about we personally think we might do under certain circumstances, but without access to the necessary data, no one can legitimately speculate about what "everyone" would do "on average" or how one approach would affect a business versus another approach.
I can see paying a fee for a change as long as it is reasonably close to what it would actually cost them to make the change.
American business generally applies value-based pricing, not cost-based pricing. This is a fundamental aspect of commerce, and is really considered to be the difference between a marginal
enterprise and a profitable one.
My townhouse cost me $189,000. My neighbor recently bought the identical unit, right next door, for $429,000. Do you really expect me to sell my townhouse for $200,000? Of course not. I'm going to price based on what I believe its value would be to my ideal buyer.
But, in most cases, no way, no how does it cost them $100 to hit a few keys on a keyboard to change someone's flight.
Let's put aside one of the pillars of American business, value-based pricing, for a minute, and just consider how much it costs to make a change to a reservation. How much do you think it really costs? Okay... have you added in the cost of acquiring the associate, training the associate, paying the associate for the associate's time, paying for the associate's health benefits, covering the associate's vacation time, giving the associate a cubicle to work from, furnishing the associate's cubicle, wiring the cubicle up, maintaining facilities for the building, renting or buying the building itself, paying for the telephone services to receive your call, paying for the IT services to maintain records and allow the associate to change them, paying auditors to audit the records for both financial and operational considerations, ... I'm sure I missed a few -- dozen. I'm not saying that it actually costs $100 (because, as I pointed out earlier, that's irrelevant), but I'm saying that it costs far more than most people think.
Oh, and don't forget that you have to add a nice hefty percentage on top of that for profit. It is well-established practice in the American consumer-facing service industry that you should price your core product a little lower, to remain competitive, and make up the loss with higher surcharges.
