Lots of news about this breaking over the last couple of days in both Chinese and English media. One such source (there are many including official Chinese mouthpieces):
http://gbtimes.com/china/ctrip-invol...ht-tickets-row

The eyebrow raising quote for me in the above link is in the body of the article:
"Ctrip.com, apart from a travel service provider, is also an open platform for more than 5,000 independent travel agents."

I had not realized that ctrip had become a platform for other agents, though the appearance of those "special promos" and oddball ticket fare conditions when pricing out a domestic flight, should have alerted me that something had changed a while back. Obviously I missed this from December 2014, just over a year ago, and prescient that things might get out of control:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2778...ersight-needed

It seems that just as with the hotel side of its business, the decision of ctrip to essentially outsource supply and some of the mechanics of procurement to innumerable external agents, has left it open to some big problems. The business reputation is only as good as the weakest link---and there are a lot of weak links out there in China's travel marketplace.

I'm not sure about recommending this company as a first line provider anymore, for anything.....at least until there's more clarity on the situation. If one or two of their source agent/suppliers are pulling shenanigans, you know there's got to be more doing the same thing, just not yet caught.

Then again, the conspiracy theory side of me thinks that perhaps some powerfully-connected player in China has purposefully set Ctrip up for a fall and loss of public confidence.