Yesterday United Airlines delighted the flying public by announcing that it would eliminate change fees and standby fees on domestic flights. Airline change fees have historically been a major point of frustration among travelers, so this was incredible news. In particular, it’s amazing to see United leading here, rather than Delta.

While this announcement is great, in this post I wanted to focus on the aspect of this that’s leaving me scratching my head.

We see airlines announce major changes all the time, both positive and negative (though usually there are more negative announcements than positive ones). However, rarely do airlines ever announce a change explicitly as being “permanent” and “forever.”