Several lucky passengers got away with some very cheap and even free flights through United Airlines due to a glitch on its bookings website.
On Thursday, some customers were able to grab tickets for $5, $10 and even free before United realized the mistake and shut down the bookings on its website and phone centers to prevent more tickets being sold at the ultra cheap prices. Some were able to even get free tickets. It is not clear how many tickets were sold at the ultra-discount. The website wouldn't accept bookings again until 2:45 p.m. Central time after the shut down, NBC reports.
Unfortunately for airlines, this isn't the first time this mistake has happened. Often times the cause was when an airline dropped a digit when entering fares into its computer system. According to United Continental Holdings Inc. spokeswoman Megan McCarthy, that may have been what happened in this case. She said the mistake was due to an error in filing the fares and not a problem with the website.
McCarthy is not sure how many tickets were sold at the mistake prices. It is not clear if the airline will honor them yet, but they're thinking about it. "As always, we will do what is appropriate," McCarthy said.
One of the customers who got a cheap deal was Maura Leahy, who lives in Houston. She was trying to book a Christmas trip back to Washington to visit her parents when she noticed the deal. She found that the trip to Washington was $5, but the return trip would be $220 which was still cheap. Then she decided not to wait and booked an earlier trip to surprise her parents on Friday.
"It was $5 round-trip, no fees, nothing," she said. "This is nuts." Leahy checked in right away and printed her boarding pass in hopes of increasing her chances of being able to use cheap the ticket.
She told her coworkers about the deal and they were able to buy cheap trip to San Francisco and Washington D.C. earlier this year.
Another customer, Bob Stokas, of Chicago, went on to buy six return tickets for his family to Los Angeles. He thought he would pay $400 per ticket, but he paid $60 altogether. He thinks the airline should honor the deal.
"My opinion is that United, from a PR perspective, needs to honor the tickets and honor the contract that we established," he told NBC. "I believe the contract was in good faith - we're good customers of United, been flying them for years."
A similar incident occurred in 2008 when United accidentally dropped the fuel surcharge which costs as much as $130. The airline honored the tickets without the charge.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
