Cheese with your whine,
profot?
It's really very simple: If you want flexibility, pay for it. If you don't, don't. If you occasionally change your plan, appeal to the airline for special consideration. But especially in tough times, don't be surprised if they insist on enforcing conditions of the contract
you initiated.
Do they risk losing a customer? Sure. But long term survival demands short term profitability. As I've said before, if the customer's partial to bending the rules, it's a customer that's costing them money. And
that's a customer they'd rather send to their competitors.