Australian flag carrier Qantas sold super expensive first-class flight tickets at an incredibly low price due to a coding glitch that reduced the first-class prices by up to 85%.
According to the Australian airline’s spokesperson, the reduced prices were “too good to be true,” as the company announced to downgrade the passengers to business class “at no additional cost,” calling it a “gesture of goodwill.”
According to Qantas’s terms and conditions, the company has the authority to cancel flight tickets and offer a full refund if internal technical errors reduce the ticket prices to suspiciously low levels.
The aviation company stated that impacted passengers will still pay almost 65% less than a normal business class passenger.
The error lasted on the Qantas website for almost 8 hours, during which nearly 300 passengers quickly purchased return flight tickets from Australia to the United States by paying only 15% of what they had to pay for a normal ticket of the same class in routine days. The tickets usually cost up to $20,000 AUD and were sold like hotcakes for a couple of thousand dollars.
The tickets included the perks of first-class travel, such as whiskey and champagne, a well-stuffed food menu, a mattress, and a pillow to sleep on.
While selling airline tickets mistakenly at such low prices is a common phenomenon in the aviation industry, Qantas is raising eyebrows due to its previous shady practices.
Despite its status as the Australian flag carrier, Qantas has recently been under renewed scrutiny.
Previously, many passengers slammed them for their frequent delays and cancellations, reportedly contributing to thousands of passengers getting their plans canceled at the eleventh hour.
The airline has also attracted criticism and legal trouble for selling tickets for ghost flights that their administration already knows will be canceled. In August 2023, Australian authorities sued Qantas for selling tickets for almost 8,000 such flights that impacted more than 86,000 people.
Earlier this year, the airliner admitted to selling fraudulent tickets and agreed to pay a hefty sum of $80 million to settle the lawsuit. This money also included $13 million of compensation to the affected passengers who were sold all these ghost tickets.
Just a couple of months ago, Qansas CEO Vanessa Hudon acknowledged that her company failed its customers.
When expensive tickets are sold cheaply by mistake, most companies end up issuing the correct tickets. However, there are instances when companies have preferred to honor their agreements even if it means heavy financial losses to them. For instance, Cathay Pacific, honored its mistaken tickets sale when they ended up selling $16,000 of tickets for as low as $675. The airline won the internet back in 2019 when it announced this compromise on X, then Twitter, stating #promisemadepromsiekept.
