I am a gold elite traveler with Continental Airlines, soon to be a platinum elite traveler. I often fly their service from the US to Hong Kong, through Newark. Often their flight from Hong Kong to Newark is early, allowing me to catch a flight to my hometown that would be impossible to catch if the flight from HK were merely on time or late. The scheduled layover is only 30 minutes, but with an arrival 30 minutes early, there is no problem catching the earlier flight. Last Friday I was returning on an upgraded economy class ticket, flying Business First, and as usual we were early. My scheduled layover was six hours. I went to the ticket counter and asked to be moved to the earlier flight. I was charged $25 to make this change. I find this charge completely inexcusable. The only reason I did not book the shorter layover was because I was not allowed to do so due to the tight connection time. I had already spent 50,000 OnePass miles and $2500 for this ticket, including the upgrade fee. Of course I paid the fee rather than shoot myself in the foot by waiting six hours plus, and it's not that much money of course, but the mere concept is outrageous. It's one thing for a traveler to want to travel at a completely different time of day, but to permit a guy without penalty to shorten a six hour layover to thirty minutes on a trip of 20 to 25 hours seems like an absolute given. They should have been seeking me out upon arrival and letting me know that this had already been arranged, in my opinion. I've always thought Continental was a little ahead of the other American airlines in terms of service, while still behind the Asian ones. Unfortunately, this proves to me that they are just the same as the rest and that they probably deserve to be flying these planes half full as they are now.