Originally Posted by
RichardInSF
To answer to your general question, if the airline makes a genuine error, they can cancel the ticket and not honor the fare. These mistakes happen often enough that there is a name for them here on FT, they are called "mistake fares" and people frequently book them in the hopes that the airline will ultimately honor the fare for PR reasons. Sometimes they do.
The law governing this goes back to misprints in print advertisements. If it was a true, significant error and is corrected as soon as found, there is no obligation to honor the price printed in error.
The DoT would beg to differ vis a vis 49 U.S.C. 41712 § 399.88(a).
And since airline pricing is governed by the feds
the obligation to honor the fares seems to be quite real.