For a brief, shining moment last Friday evening — well, two hours actually — British Airways apparently had coach roundtrip fares from U.S. cities to India for $40 to $100, plus taxes and fees.
The fares had been loaded incorrectly, but travel agents were able to issue tickets before the airline corrected them.
This sort of thing has happened before, and often airlines honor the fares, deciding that the potential negative publicity would outweigh the losses on the tickets. Presumably these days too, the additional revenue from baggage, food, drinks and seat assignments etc, has to soften the blow.
In any case, British Airways has taken an alternate approach. They say in a letter to travel agents, some not sent out until Wednesday afternoon, that they moved immediately to “correct these fares,” but that the “system update is not immediate.”
As the fares were so clearly below the normal fare levels, British Airways is unable to honor these bookings. We have cancelled all affected bookings made during this two-hour window, and will make a full refund for any paid for and issued ticket.
The airline also “sincerely” apologizes, and also says they will “refund any fees associated with the rebooking of other airline segments” booked on the same ticket. Anyone who booked flights in conjunction with the India reservations, but on a separate ticket, is out of luck.
Admittedly, anyone who booked one of these fares had to think there was a very good chance it was a mistake. So booking anything else nonrefundable in connection with the ticket, from internal flights within the US or India, to hotels or land arrangements, would have been risky.
Although, British Airways, by waiting until Tuesday or Wednesday to make and announce this decision, certainly put more of these travelers at risk. Travel agents generally have a 24 hour window to cancel a ticket without penalty. Which means that say, if a client waited a day or two to add other flights, they would be too late.
And were these fares ridiculous? Of course. But this is a time when major airlines trumpet $99 flights from the U.S. to Europe in winter, (Not of course highlighting the additional fees and taxes,) And within the U.S. full page ads routinely say things like “Nationwide fare sale starting at $29.” (Not of course in this case saying that these apply to maybe two city-pairs only, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.).
Moreover, British Airways, in matching some of the European discount carriers, currently does offer seats between London and Frankfurt, for example, for UK£5 one way. Again plus tax etc, nonrefundable, and very very limited, but that fare is legitimate.
Travel agents and sophisticated travelers almost certainly knew this “sale” was different and a mistake. But it’s in some ways hard to expect a traveling public bombarded with other offers that sound too good to be true to tell the difference.
I almost have to wonder, if the airline honored the fares, and even said that they might do a few unannounced instant crazy fares on their Web site in future on purpose, if the whole episode might not have served as a public relations bonanza.
Admittedly such a sale would have to be very short-term – as in under an hour, even half an hour – or limited to a very few seats per plane, since the internet spreads the word so quickly. But it certainly would drive bargain hunters regularly to the BA.com site.
In any case, the decision has been made, and no doubt British Airways will have more than a few complicated problems to sort out in addition to the goodwill issues. No word on if the programmer who made the error is still amongst the ranks of the employed, or if this was their parting good-bye shot.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
British Airways apparently had coach roundtrip fares from U.S. cities to India for $40 to $100, plus taxes and fees.
================================================
When I checked BA.com, I found the cheapest fare in the month of OCT to be around $1,400.00 dollars roundtrip. It was a mistake and they corrected it. The “debate” is should they honor that mistake. They say NO. The traveling public says, of course, YES. Isnt that the case with the flying public though? THEY want exceptions to their unexpected events: I cant fly because I’m sick. Mr Elliott’s column is FULL of these exceptions where the passenger was at fault and refunds were given. Unfortunately, it was a mistake. Did anyone really expect to pay $40.00 from the US to BOMBAY? I highly doubt it.
Now, bombard me with that goodwill gesture mantra.
There’s only one problem with your analysis – the total fare was NOT $40 (if they really were offering a $40 roundtrip fare to India, that would be truly laughable). It was a $40 base fare plus taxes and fees, which from what I understand would have brought the total to about $550. I’ve seen discount airfares to India from DFW as low as about $900 R/T with taxes and fees included. Having lived in India for the past 2 years and a veteran of going back and forth between here and the U.S., I can definitely tell you that October isn’t high season for travel over here. With this in perspective, I can see why folks wouldn’t automatically consider $550 a mistake.
Also, I think the debate is more like, since the airlines won’t excuse most travelers for stupid mistakes like misspelling a name by one letter, why should we let them off the hook when they make one? They expect us to take responsibility for our mistakes (fair enough), but they don’t want to take responsibility for theirs. That’s just wrong.
MeanMeosh, couldn’t have said it better myself. And while I agree most travel agents had to wonder about the fare, the travelling public has seen so many misleading ads that this might not have seemed that absurd. The total was over $550 – I didn’t book it but priced a ticket for fun. Is that any more absurd than “London for $99?” which they advertise in San Francisco newspapers, and of course is one way, plus hundreds in fees and tax, and only from JFK.
Ditto on the differing treatments of mistakes, names, dates, anything. I had a young client make a mistake with the international date line last year, he figured it out a day and a half later for a flight 8 months in advance. The airline refused to waive the $150 fee and sent him a letter explaining they they were sorry but could not afford to pay for his mistake.
I was actually going to comment this on Elliot’s previous posts before they were closed. But I rather hesitated as it might give British Airways some…ideas.
OTOH, if their lawyers thought of this already, they might avail of this legal concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_(contract_law)
Of course, only a judge will decide that if ever.
Absolutely ridiculous from British Airways….
My flight from DTW-BOM was 650.. which to me, is a very good deal- but i’ve paid as low as $800 in the past from an agent for this trip before, so I can’t say for sure that this was really some type of obvious major mistake / out of this world price… could’ve just been a good sale on some post-holiday fares (my booking was for Jan-Feb). Heck haven’t we heard about the major decline in hotel rates? and since the economy in detroit was so bad I figured they were struggling to fill planes or something..
Also if they “fixed” this “mistake” immediately like they said they didn’t, why did it take so long to issue cancellations? MY credit card had a pending charge for two days- and now a final/permanent charge is on my card (and has been there since Monday)… You would think a “mistake” that was supposedly caught Friday could be taken care within a couple of days, before the charge went final.
And what upsets me the most is that They didn’t wait 1-2 days, which would’ve been acceptable… In fact, they (British Airways nor Orbitz) never notified my at all that my trip was canceled.. Late night tuesday everything was still fine, I had e-ticket numbers, confirmation numbers, seat assignments, everything. 5 days after I booked = time to tell everyone about my trip and making tour plans and stuff with family in India.. Now what do I do about that??? BA/Orbitz could care less and I’m the one that’s screwed now.
Wednesday morning when I went to update my frequent flyer number is when I noticed that I couldn’t access my booking. No E-mails, no phone calls, NOTHING from them.
oh and the kicker is they said it’ll take 21 days for me to get my refund for the credit card charge… and after I complained about that, I was told I should be happy, because it’s usually 60 days.
safe to say i’ll be sticking with northwest (err- delta)…
Why would someone not think the fare was valid? Last year, Spirit Airlines had a $19 fare on one of their international routes. Airlines will do very low fares in destination all the time. My last fare, which was a published fare on UA from SFO to ALB was $49 each way.
BA should honor this fare, but sadly there is no requirement for them to do so.
In March Icelandic Air had a $68.00 fare for round trip travel from NYC to London. At the same time Delta, United and US Airways had $84.00 round trip fares. Sure, these didn’t include the taxes and fees, which when added took the fares up over $400.00. Given that the airlines periodically do things that appear not to make sense to a lot of people, including travel agents, why should a travel agent question another strange move by an airline.
I think BA should suck it up and honor the tickets that were issued. Personally I doubt that very many were issued but even if a lot were, that’s not anyone’s fault other than BA’s.
I agent i was contacting sent me the itinerary email and a cost of $950 (not $550). So, there is no way for me to think that this was a deal too good to be true. However, when i checked my credit card statement 2 days lates, it showed that only $564 was debited. Ofcourse the agent said that the ticket was cancelled by BA. It is ridicuolous. I hope someone sues BA over this.
BA made a mistake and they should honor the fare that was listed.
Over the years, I have been in stores where they had the wrong prices listed\labeled\etc. on items and these stores honored the wrong price on the item. One time, I was buying a diamond ring for my wife and the price that was listed was 30% lower than the actual price.
I booked a British Airways trip to India through a reputable agent as it was travel for business. My total fare was $869 – in no way glaring that it seemed like a mistake. My trip was booked on October 2, and we did not find out until yesterday, October 8 that the entire reservation had been cancelled. Because BA waited so long to tell us, we lost an entire week and now the fares have gone up even higher.
As I wrote on my website, how long must a ticketed passenger wait before s/he can ever feel reasonably confident that the airfare was accurate and will be honored? Is it okay for an airline to rescind a ‘mistake’ fare three days later, but not two weeks later?
The insecurity surrounding purchased tickets in general after these types of delayed cancellations is what troubles me so much.
Susan and others, you – and agents -will really love British Airway’s latest move. Now they will offer people who booked a ticket a $300 discount on a new ticket. But it MUST be booked direct. ie, you can’t use your usual travel agent. Which now means that agents not only deal with the hassle of the original ticket being cancelled, they lose a future sale…