Comments on: British Airways won’t honor too-good-to-be-true India fares

By: Janice Hough

Janice Hough — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:09:29 +0000

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…

By: kristal

kristal — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:07:49 +0000

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.

By: Susan

Susan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:05:06 +0000

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.

By: Arizona Road Warrior

Arizona Road Warrior — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:48:58 +0000

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.

By: Sud

Sud — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:26:53 +0000

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.

By: John M

John M — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:22:05 +0000

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.

By: Bodega

Bodega — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:23:56 +0000

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.

By: Raj

Raj — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:55:16 +0000

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)…

By: David Z

David Z — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:04:41 +0000

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.

By: Janice Hough

Janice Hough — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:01:34 +0000

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.