US Airways $2 fare in Mileage Run forum

Old Apr 17, 2005, 11:12 pm
  #61  
 
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Originally Posted by RoyalFlush
What is the disposition on these tickets? US will honor all issued? Those people who booked on aa.com got screwed?

What about JaxPax and SeeYa - anyone heard from those two yet? They are jetting away one these fares today.

I'm back and it was a success!
I checked in online yesterday after buying the ticket.. I flew JAX-DCA-PIT-ART-PIT-CLT-JAX, leaving Jacksonville at 7:30am and just arrived back at midnight. I met up with SeeYa in Pittsburgh.

No issues on the ticket for either of us. Kiosk worked fine. We had a chat with the US Airways Watertown manager/ramp agent/ticket agent/gate agent employee (singular employee, though there appeared to be a trainee or something helping him) who said he got a call yesterday when this was all happening and they zeroed out all ART inventory while they fixed it. Apparently folks at US got fired who screwed this one up. Appears that they will be honoring tickets, according to him.

I might add:
Very hospitable people there at the Watertown Airport.
However, it's in the middle of nowhere. Car rental desk is there, but closed for a month according to the police officer who sits in the terminal and does nothing all day. The US folks gave us a folder of take-out menus and we had Chinese food delivered.... told us it would take 40 minutes, but it was there in about 20. The only other "concessions" are about three vending machines. There's a picnic table outside and some wooden benches. Other seats in the terminal are hard plastic bus-station-like benches.

A couple of photos of the facility:
The Mighty Beechcraft 1900D
First sight at arrival: The terminal from the ramp
The Terminal from the parking lot
Other buildings at the Watertown Airport
The picnic table
US Airways Express Counter at Watertown
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 4:57 am
  #62  
 
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Originally Posted by ClueByFour
Anybody with a "dream map" kind of alert was hit. Anybody in any of the originating markets (HHH, JST, ART, LEB, AVL) would have known, because if they are tracking any fares, there are various GDS products that will ping you when a fare you are looking at drops.

I found out about it in the latter fashion, having been looking for a few fares ex-AVL. Of course, that I read that e-mail and opened FT 5 minutes later....

Additionally, there is the word of mouth factor, which is exacerbated by the internet. If one of every 3 FT folks who booked called a friend, and that friend called a friend, and so forth.

But forget that--many of these flights were not the $2 coach variety, they were like the $35 F variety, often booked at codeshares on UA metal. I somehow doubt that the real monetary value of those is insignificant, given that one or two seats sold can be the breakeven factor on a mainline flight...

I'm concerned about the "F" factor on UA. Any flights on US exclusively
should be honored. Its their mistake. But is this going to effect UA's
bottom line? Does US have to pay UA the regular fare? Can UA cancel
the portions on their flights?
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 5:24 am
  #63  
 
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Originally Posted by channa
How do we know "no court in the land would uphold" this?

Using the Amazon internet price goof precedent, upon charging of the credit card, the deal has commenced. Amazon didn't charge or ship the items in question. In our case, credit cards were charged and tickets were issued. It's done.

While CA law doesn't apply here, state consumer pricing law requires that posted pricing be honored. Typographical errors in an advertisement can be corrected and noted at the point of sale, but if a price is displayed or posted at the point of sale, it must be honored.

I'm fairly confident that a small claims court in California would probably uphold an issued ticket that was charged to a customer, if it ever got to that stage...
Biz Law 101...California is exempted from common sense such things.
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 5:24 am
  #64  
 
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Originally Posted by JAXPax
I'm back and it was a success!

I might add:
Very hospitable people there at the Watertown Airport.
However, it's in the middle of nowhere. Car rental desk is there, but closed for a month according to the police officer who sits in the terminal and does nothing all day. The US folks gave us a folder of take-out menus and we had Chinese food delivered.... told us it would take 40 minutes, but it was there in about 20. The only other "concessions" are about three vending machines. There's a picnic table outside and some wooden benches. Other seats in the terminal are hard plastic bus-station-like benches.

Excellent job, JAXPax!!! To answer the question I posed earlier, ART looks like a cross between BLF and BKW, more to the BKW side, which is a good thing.

How was the Chinese?

How was the TSA feelup?

Does the ART folks have any idea what's going to be coming over the next few months?

And who is going to be the first cockroach to kiss them???

Last edited by jimcfsus; Apr 18, 2005 at 5:27 am
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 6:17 am
  #65  
 
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Originally Posted by jimcfsus
Excellent job, JAXPax!!! To answer the question I posed earlier, ART looks like a cross between BLF and BKW, more to the BKW side, which is a good thing.

How was the Chinese?

How was the TSA feelup?

Does the ART folks have any idea what's going to be coming over the next few months?

And who is going to be the first cockroach to kiss them???
Chinese food was not bad. About as good as I can get here in Jacksonville, FL, but that's not saying much.

TSA was quite thorough as SeeYa has mentioned on another thread. She was the first to go through the three TSA agents and got a full wanding/pat down and they ran one of her bags through several times. I went through next... I didn't beep, but they stared at my backpack in the x-ray for several minutes before deciding to search it. The TSA person rummaged in it for quite some time before deciding that my thumb drive looked like a lighter and they re-xrayed my bag. Most thorough TSA people I've ever encountered. I think they were just bored after watching TV all day.

I didn't have time to organize anything to bring for the US folks, but maybe I'll give them some FFOCUS appreciation when I go through on Wed the 27th. I don't know if anybody else is going through before that.
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 7:56 am
  #66  
 
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As JAXPAx has already posted - they honored the fare. In fact, US has said (in today's Charlotte Observer) they will honor them.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlot...l/11421669.htm (free registration required)

Here's the relevant snippet from the article:

To dive for: Round-trip fares of $1.86

US Airways glitch opened the door for online mileage hounds

TONY MECIA

Staff Writer


Talk about your low-fare airline.

For a few hours this weekend, US Airways was selling tickets to a handful of smaller cities for $1.86 round-trip plus fees -- a tremendous deal that quickly filled Internet boards with chatter.

After discovering a "system glitch" Saturday afternoon that caused the low fares, US Airways corrected the errors by Saturday evening, said airline spokesman Chuck Allen. He said he did not know how many people bought the super-cheap tickets.

"Obviously, if we sold any tickets at that rate, we'll honor them," Allen said.

....
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 10:21 am
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.......

Last edited by RoyalFlush; Mar 31, 2009 at 2:39 pm
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 10:31 am
  #68  
 
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Originally Posted by RoyalFlush
Thank you, so much for the 411, JAXPax. Just curious, did you scratch your name in the picnic table?
Haha no, maybe I will next week if I can find an area that is free enough from bird crap. There were some names scratched into the plank benches that are over by the fence.
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 10:51 am
  #69  
 
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Kudos to dmfriedman for cross posting this.

Unfortunately I was too wrapped up in the Fiji thread and missed this completely. Moving up to CP through this would've been much more valuable to me than a cheap Fiji flight .
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 11:14 am
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Originally Posted by jetsetter
The airlines operate under a whole separate series of laws, rules, and regulations. There may be DOT regulations that require carriers to honor tickets once issued. I know in the pre-internet days if an airline accidentally aedvertised say a $2 fare, they must honor the rate on the day that it is advertised in the newspaper but then they can retract it the next day. This came up in the 90's with a CO fare from BOS to the west coast, but they ednded up having to honor tickets bought the day the mistyped add ran in the newspaper.
Do you know if CO was forced to honor this by the DOT or was it a business decision?
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 11:20 am
  #71  
 
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Originally Posted by sbtinme
Too many collateral issues. It wasn't just mileage runners buying these fares yesterday. Some of it was entirely legit.
So my MRs aren't legitimate?
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 11:23 am
  #72  
 
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Originally Posted by channa
I think there was some casual phone calls and emails about it, but never any sort of hearing or formal complaint filed.

Big difference, we're talking one person's opinion because he got a couple of phone calls.
I agree. One or two people filed a DOT complaint in the COPA thread I believe. This situation is completely different because there were probably a few hundred (or thousand) tickets sold. There would be many many complaints. It's also easier to argue that the overseas COPA flights were mistakes. These days with cheapies such as the $5+ SAN-IAD DH fare, who's to say that the US Air sale was an obvious mistake?
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 1:30 pm
  #73  
 
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So the lesson here is that I need to sign up for travelocity dream fares? Good to know.
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Old Apr 18, 2005, 8:32 pm
  #74  
 
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Wanted to add that there was a blurb on these fares on Headline News... apparently Flyertalk mileage runners have arrived. They included the statement "USAirways will honor these tickets."

Congratulations to all those who picked up the fares. I saw them at the tail end and was not able to get it to price out on any dates in the few minutes I tried before I decided I don't really want more USAirways or United miles anyway..
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Old Apr 19, 2005, 2:28 pm
  #75  
 
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According to US Air - as mentioned on several national news stations - they will honor the fares. Congratulations on a good deal.

Originally Posted by holtju2
As long as the ticket is issued I doubt that there is much that US can do than going than going in to chapter 7 if they don't want to honor these. I guess that somebody mistakenly uploaded a wrong published fare.
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