SonTech

Isn't that a bit like comparing apples and oranges? One ticket was fully flexible and the other isn't. Price sensitive passengers who usually fly LCC's generally know legacy airlines are more expensive so would think it was unusual.

I would have though any decent TA would know the booking class and they would have been able to spot that the fare was a lot cheaper than it should have been unless they where specifically told it was a promotional fare.

How much usually is a B bucket fully flexible fare on BA to TLV anyway as to get some comparison of the original cheapness of the tickets?

cagcag

And, human rights for ALL in IL?

englisha

I didn't book this fare, I just find it surprising BA would call it an obvious mistake. The point was that other companies offer lower fares which are not mistakes and the general public are supposed to know that £60 more on BA is an obvious mistake.

Keep it Riel

Good to see BA's summer intern programme is back for another year...

Given all the publicity, I can't believe there isn't some opportunistic law firm out there making a case as we speak - for the publicity if nothing else. There seem to have been a large number of cases of people who bought the fare in good faith and who are out of pocket from the incidentals bought in the lengthy gap between booking and the BA cancellation (or the customer finding out that BA had cancelled). I am sure we all agree that BA should look after these people one way or another.

Innocent Abroad

The story is now featured on TheMarker, the financial supplement of Haa'retz. It's in Hebrew of course but there are some "nice" tweets in English.

BA - TheMarker

adrianlondon

I think editing the title to remove the "?" that was originally present wasn't a good thing to do. It's leading to some arguments about who knew what and when!

(Didn't buy the tickets, just here for the drama, and to be prepared if something similar happens in the future and I do partake.)

ajbrowc

The "Flexible Ticket" doesn't wash I'm afraid, as my booking confirmation says:

Cluster One

I don't have a direct interest in this particular fare, but:

Surely the TA must share some of the responsibility here? They should have realised that the price was way too low for the booking class*.
A non-FTer doing a web search would simply see a fare on BA that was of the same magnitude as fares on other airlines.

(*Assuming of course that humans are involved at any point in the pricing/selling process!)

allturnleft

KARFA

and £57 carrier surcharge which is kept by BA - arguably part of the fare under another name.

englisha

BA has offered (presumably) non mistake fares at this price before, even booked directly with them. Norway or Germany to the USA, via LHR are often this price.

Sam Bee

Wizz Air have offered 'Rescue' flights to 'Stranded' BA passengers for £80 each way.

Using language normally reserved for airlines that have gone bust. BA Marketing Department must be hating on whoever made the decision to cancel these flights now.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-a8409351.html

flyuk

Got my Netflights voucher. Can only be made by telephone, and "Please note: a £7pp fee applies to telephone bookings.". So 40% more expensive, and £7 already removed for a service charge.

Oh dear.

Sam Bee

OTA's would have no human involvement in these fares - they would be loaded, bookable and issues without any alerts as nothing unusual.

Regular human TA's of course could have picked up on it, but again, there was nothing ridiculously out of the ordinary about this - they would have quoted cheapest fares. Most would have paid little attention unless BA is their main issueing carrier as they don't memorise flexibility / TP's of all 16 economy subclasses of the 100 odd airlines they would book.

Genuinely, it's only people with the expertise on Flyertalk / multiple blogs that would have picked up anything massively out of the ordinary.

Virgin: https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flight-deals.html £300 to Boston - 14 hours flying = £21.42 an hour
BA: £187 to Tel Aviv - 10 hours flying = £18.70 a hour

Not really a 'Manifest Error'. That's just the first example I thought of.

Dave Noble

Of course it matters - if the person bought tickets at 00:32 and is claiming that had not looked at the thread before booking - a post to the thread at 23:47 on the previous day, kind of proves that the statement is false