Travelers get cheap first class flights from Australia to US due to Qantas problems

CNN
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Last Thursday, for a brief period, first-class return flights from Australia to the US, which normally cost up to A$28,000 (about $19,000), were available from Qantas at an amazing discount of 85%

Due to a coding error, about 300 lucky people were able to purchase them from the airline’s website for just $3,400 each before the mistake was corrected.

“Unfortunately, this is a case where the fare was actually too good to be true,” Qantas said in a statement on Thursday.

However, not all hope is lost. Instead of canceling tickets, Qantas said it would rebook customers to business class “as a goodwill gesture” at no extra cost. Alternatively, passengers who are not satisfied with business class can receive full refunds.

Flying Qantas business class between Australia and the United States typically costs around $11,000.

Qantas’ gesture of goodwill follows a similar blunder that was handled differently by the airline last year.

Last August, Australian regulators accused Qantas in a lawsuit of selling tickets for more than 8,000 flights that the airline had already canceled – affecting more than 86,000 passengers.

Qantas agreed in May to pay nearly $80 million to settle the lawsuit, with more than $13 million of that amount going to affected customers.

Its CEO, Vanessa Hudson, told CNN in June that the company had “let down our customers” as well as its staff.

Airlines regularly make mistakes by selling premium tickets at the glaringly wrong price, although some have chosen to honor them.

In 2019, Cathay Pacific offered first and business class seats from Vietnam to cities in North America for up to $675 round-trip.

The Hong Kong flag carrier honored the deal by tweeting #promisemadepromisekept and #lessonlearned on its X account.

But that’s not always the case. In 2010, American Airlines refused to honor round-trip first class tickets from the US to Australia worth up to $20,000, which it sold for the economy class price of $1,100. Instead, he offered $200 vouchers as compensation.

A year earlier, British Airways failed to honor mistakenly sold $40 flights from North America to India, offering $300 vouchers instead.