What ethics?
BA was made aware of the error and
they decided to honor it. They didn't have to, but they did.
That pretty much lets everyone "off the hook" ethics-wise, IMHO.
Whether a fare is an error or not, I perfer to "shoot first, ask questions later." They are calling the shots in the end, not me. If they don't want to honor it, so be it. And if I had a "feeling" the fare might have been in error to begin with (which historically is usually mentioned straight away in these FlyerTalk threads), I can live with their decision (as long as they give me all my money back).
But if I had a really
resonable expectation of it being a legitimate offering, I might resist their attempt to not honor the thing. Case in point:
MX recently had what turned out to be an error fare of $128 to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I regularly fly this route for around $225. So when a friend (not a FlyerTalker) who I share a condo with down there called to tell me about the $128 fare, I
really didn't think it was an error. I just assumed it was some really good promotion or deal.
And because of that, if they had not honored the fare (they did, BTW), I might have put up a bit of a stink.
In this day and age with Spirit Airlines giving away seats for free, and other airlines having special $1 fares as part of promotions and such...if a web site gives me some incredible fare, I'll generally grab it and ask questions later. Example from just
today:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Cologne/Bonn – Christmas surprise from Germanwings: the first low-cost German airline is filing its Christmas sack with 50,000 tickets
all costing one euro. This coming Friday, December 6th 2002, anyone can use the website of Germanwings,
www.germanwings.com, to book a Christmas present for the symbolic price of one euro. "The Christmas campaign is a thank-you to our customers ", said Germanwings MD Dr.Joachim Klein.</font>
There may be many unsuspecting visitors to that web site that are in for a nice surprise. Will they think it's a legitimate offering or an error fare?
Therefore, it doesn't become an ethical question for me unless they announce it was an error and decide
not to honor it.
[This message has been edited by PremEx (edited 12-04-2002).]