Continental widens window for same-day changes.

Travel Weekly, 6/26/2008

Continental is now allowing customers with restricted tickets to make changes to flights within 24 hours of their original scheduled departure.

The airline previously allowed customers to choose from flights departing within three hours of their original scheduled departure.

Continental's fee for same-day flight changes is $50 ($25 for Platinum and Gold Elite members of the airline's frequent-flyer program). The fee applies to Continental Express, Continental Connection and Continental Micronesia tickets.

If there are no seats available to be confirmed, customers may still stand by. In these cases, the fee will only be charged if a seat is cleared on an earlier flight.

The same-day change option is available 24 hours before the original scheduled flight and remains available until that flight is closed for check-in. Inside of this time frame, customers may select another flight that departs earlier, later or even on a different day, so long as it departs no more than 12 hours from when the request is made.