Originally Posted by
Often1
No. You have not read the two posts about the DOT rule and its enforcement Guidance.
AF is not going to "get in trouble" in the least. OP may ---- repeat, may ---- have a claim for money if he can't get the award he cancelled in reliance on the AF e-ticket. But, if there is anything crystal clear, there is no violation of the DOT post-purchase rule in cancelling what is self-evidently a mistake fare.
Back before people started writing about error fares, carriers generally honored them. A few people would find a great fare and purchase. The carrier would quickly correct the error and those few people were lucky. Now, with people plastering social media with information about these fares, when carriers find them, there are hundreds if not thousands of "mistakes" and those get cancelled.
1. There is NOTHING self-evident in airline fares. Since the pricing algorithms are never public, they can yield anything and nobody can prove that there is an error.
2. It was clearly a f***-up by AF. So it's not up-to the PAX to suffer from its consequences. I'll leave this here, just as an example:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/today...as-25/4211689/
3. If I were the passenger, I would purchase the cancelled tickets with money and then bring AF to the court room in the US to make them pay for it. In the current situation AF loses nothing: the employee who made a mistake and published a 100USD fare will not be fired, simply because it is impossible to fire an employee in France unless he rapes and kills two of his office-mates. Two, because one won't be enough.