Originally Posted by
plunet
To be fair to PR, they or their agents have honoured other probable mistake fares such as
this one, although I don't think it's obvious to anyone if that was an OTA mistake or an airline mistake.
I heard there were at least 1,000 tickets that got issued. My guess is unlike the LHR-MNL-HKG, this round saw a spike of Philippine-based bookings (via Philippine-issued credit cards) which may have forced the airline to reconsider.
Plus the fact that MNL-HKG flights are serviced by mostly widebodies where they have more seats to go around, Osaka-Kansai and Tokyo-Narita flights are mostly serviced by narrowbodies like the A321, where there are only 12 seats in Business or 18 seats if you get a widebody A330. Considering the number of tickets that got sold, I think it wiped out a considerable amount of premium seat inventory for Japan flights which may be profitable for the airline.
When buying error fares, it's always wise to expect it would be cancelled unless otherwise stated by the airline. There's a saying that goes "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."
Of course, I think PAL should have at least cancelled the tickets a lot sooner than 72hrs.