I often feel anxious when I need to book a flight in advance. What if it turns out I need to arrive a day earlier or a day later? Or I need change my return date by a day?
In the current system you have only two travel options: (1) Lock in a precise flight to get a discounted fare, or (2) pay the far greater full fare, for maximum flexibility. If you chose the first option and then change your flight, the change fee can be significant (generally around $150 in the US).
It seems to me that the needs of travelers would be far better served by reorganizing all of this into a “travel market”. An airline could provide a time window for travel. You are guaranteed a seat on your original flight, but you then have an option to change your travel date by a day or two.
The airline could set up a marketplace for seat-swapping, paying a modest rebate to flyers who are happy to switch to flights that are less full, while charging a most fee (eg: $10 for shifting by one day, $20 for shifting by two days) for flyers who wish to switch to fuller flights that have available seats. A web site could provide travelers with the updated cash “value” of any available flight, which could turn out to be either positive or negative, depending on how full each flight is.
An airline that offers this kind of inexpensive flexibility would be very popular — travelers could get the economy of booking in advance, without the anxiety of being locked in to a specific flight.
Two or more airlines could even cooperate to create a shared market, offering seat swaps between their respective flights, thereby better balancing the aggregate load.
Everybody wins.