Originally Posted by
84fiero
I've won some and lost some on mistake fares. You generally just have to roll with the punches.
I'm not saying there couldn't be some incidents where it's not an obvious mistake and the airline tries to weasel out - where you might file a complaint with any applicable regulatory agency. But those are pretty rare and even those wouldn't call for shenanigans like L&LF is doing.
I do think that the airlines should be held to the same time standard as customers to unilaterally cancel a ticket without penalty. So for example for US ticket sales, customers can't cancel or change after 24 hours without paying any change or cancel fees - so then airlines selling US tickets also have 24 hours to claim a mistake and cancel, otherwise they're held to the ticket. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
But nothing about this stunt (which is just what it is) that L&LF is pulling will do anything to change any laws or regulations (Canadian regs would apply anyway to his ticket). I'm not sure what his purpose was, other than creating some drama to generate clicks.
One tricky thing about good for goose and gander is that the underlying contract law principle is already fairly applied; there are just inherent information asymmetries making this harder. When a purchaser buys a ticket knowing the offer is likely a mistake, it's a voidable contract. When an airline sells a ticket and Joe realizes 48 hours later he booked the wrong date, the airline had no way of knowing Joe made a mistake all along.
It's also hard to analogize- if I bought a ticket and want to change it more than 24 hours later, I'm not completely stuck - I just have to pay a penalty to change it. It's hard to come up with an analogous penalty here. The U.S. DOT has suggested the airline is on the hook for any expenses made in detrimental reliance. Here, of course, Matthew couldn't claim any expenses since he incurred them after being repeatedly told his ticket wasn't being honored.
Regardless, stunts like this don't help make the case for more forgiving policies for good faith customer mistakes, or more punitive policies for good faith airline mistakes. I really hope Matthew gets no compensation whatsoever for this disruptive tantrum. This isn't "denied boarding." It's "I was given options months ago and refused to accept any of them and the airline told me exactly what would happen months ago but I thought if I flew out there I could hoodwink them."