Think you got lucky with bargain ANA business class tickets? Not so fast, experts say

SINGAPORE: Some travellers managed to snap up ANA business class tickets on Tuesday (Apr 18) for a fraction of the typical price due to a currency conversion glitch. 

The pricing error occurred on the Japanese airline's Vietnam website and it took half a day before the mistake was rectified.

Bloomberg reported that most of the heavily discounted round-trip tickets listed Jakarta as the point of departure with a stopover in Tokyo before arriving at several locations in North America and the Caribbean.

They were purchased for a mere few hundred dollars - a steal compared to the usual US$10,000 price for a business class seat. 

"I never thought I'd catch such a deal," customer Johnny Wong told Bloomberg after booking a return business class flight from Jakarta to Honolulu, Hawaii for just US$550. 

Another customer, Herman Yip, swept up 25 business class tickets from Jakarta to Aruba for only US$17,000.

ANA has since said it will make a decision by the end of April as to whether it will honour the ticket price. 

But travel experts CNA spoke to said that the bargain hunters should not hold out hope, and that the joy may be short-lived as airlines like ANA reserve the right to cancel the tickets.

Q: Are airlines obligated to honour fares sold cheaply by mistake? 

Many airlines refer to the conditions of carriage which allow them to unilaterally cancel tickets when an incorrect ticket price has been charged. 

If the airline comes out quickly to address the erroneous fares and cancel the issued tickets, it would then be disingenuous for those who buy them to pretend they are innocent customers who got hoodwinked, said Mr Aaron Wong, the founder of travel website The MileLion.

However, if the airline remains silent for a prolonged period, or does not address the matter at all, then it is reasonable for consumers to assume the airline intends to honour the tickets as sold and start making plans around the tickets. 

The founder of Suitesmile, a "travel hacking" and miles blog, also said that airlines are not obligated to honour erroneous fares.

Many variables can influence this decision, such as the extent of financial damage suffered by the airline, said Mr Fairuz Sallim. Airlines must also consider the amount of manual work required to check the total number of bookings with error fares and process refunds, if any. 

Q: When do airlines honour tickets that were incorrectly priced? 

Whether or not airlines honour mistake fares really boils down to the scale of the mistake, Mr Wong said.

For example, if only a handful of tickets were sold, and if said tickets were on a limited number of routes and only in economy class, it would be relatively easier for the airline to honour the mistake.

In the case of ANA, the problem is that the airline was slow to react to the fare error, Mr Wong said, noting that those tickets almost invariably involve the very lucrative Japan-North America route.

Mr Wong added that as the route sees a high load factor in business class from business travellers and premium leisure passengers, the financial impact of this mistake is likely to be significant, which reduces the likelihood that the airline will honour the fares.

Mr Fairuz shared the same view and pointed to how the ANA "error fare fiasco" was "huge and much more complicated" as the tickets remained available for about 12 hours.  

Travellers could also change the departing and arriving cities, with a refund value that may be more than the error fare itself, he noted.

Q: Have airlines not honoured such fares?  

There is a precedent for airlines cancelling fares sold by mistake. Last year, Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways refused to honour several hundred Sydney-Berlin tickets that were sold for A$336 (US$225), following a glitch affecting travel aggregator website Skyscanner.

Chile's LATAM last year scrapped business class tickets from Madrid to Santiago that were sold for as little as US$300, citing an error fare. 

Mr Fairuz said that in his experience, errors caused by online travel agencies have a much lower chance of being honoured when compared with internal mistakes made by an airline. 

Those who managed to secure the ultra-cheap ANA tickets will hope the airline follows the lead of Cathay Pacific.

Cathay made a similar blunder in 2019 and sold first and business class tickets at economy prices.

The Hong Kong airline eventually honoured the tickets.

Q. What should travellers do when they spot airline pricing mistakes online? 

Customers can still go ahead and purchase tickets, even if the pricing appears to be unusually low, Mr Wong said.

However, they must be prepared from the get-go to accept whatever decision the airline finally makes. Time is of the essence with these things, so making a purchase on the spot is always advisable, he added. 

Customers overall have "nothing to lose" when it comes to fare mistakes.

"If the airline honours the fare, great. If they cancel it, well, you get a refund," Mr Wong said.

"Sometimes, they might go for an in-between solution, like cancelling the ticket but offering some other form of compensation like a voucher." 

Mr Wong also advised travellers not to opt for fare holds, where some airlines allow customers to pay a nominal fee to hold a particular fare for a period of time.

In all historical cases where mistake fares were honoured, they were only honoured for those who bought and paid immediately, as opposed to those who bought fare holds, he said.

Mr Fairuz highlighted the need for travellers to be flexible as they will have to look at the departing and arriving cities of the fare, and the time of the year that the fares can be found. 

"They have to also calculate the amount of money that they will need to spend to position themselves in that particular city, just to catch the 'error fare' flights," he added.

Travellers may also have to push back trip planning for at least a couple of weeks while they wait to see if the fares are being honoured. 

"When fares are not honoured, travellers need to know that it may take weeks for their money to be refunded," Mr Fairuz added.