BA mistake fares: when are you safe?
Jun 25, 2018, 6:56 pm
#16
Moderator, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges, and Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
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O fare basis is one of the cheapest fare buckets available, so cheap that BA don't allow Avios upgrades from it - which I would deem as meaning that adding in the Avios value would make it too much of a loss-leader fare for Club Europe / World Traveller Plus. So I agree that from what information we have here it probably isn't a mistake fare, even if the current fare you can see is now very high. The other very cheap fare buckets are Q and G (which isn't widely on sale).
To check whether this is a plausible-but-cheap fare, have a look at the e-ticket email and at the end look at the "Fare Details" box. For an O fare to a middle distance location I would expect that to say something like £20 or more, with the rest of fare being taxes and airport charges. BA doesn't apply carrier surcharges on shorthaul sectors, but on longer sectors that is effectively part of the fare too. If the Fare Details box says under £1 then your alarm bells can start to ring for O, though some O, Q and G fares are exactly £1, and they range to £50 and beyond. The Base Fare was under £1 in the case of TLV and DXB - however they had a carrier surcharge on top. Furthermore TLV and DXB were seemingly the only places affected and they were pitched into fare bucket B, the second highest economy bucket.
Also you can go to BA.com / Flights and Holidays / Find our cheapest flights. The total fare you paid including taxes could be close to twice the each-way fares shown there, or above. In which case you don't need to worry. Moreover fares from LGW in particular have a huge spectrum, since BA is competing directly against easyJet at one end of the spectrum, and legacy airlines at the other end. I've done a £42 return fare LGW to AGP (Málaga), so base Fare of £6, where my car had to pay more for parking than I did for flying.
So to work through an example using TXL (Berlin) as a random example, it's possible to get a return fare in O for £81, and the Fare Details box would show just £23 for that fare. There is a cheaper fare of £75 return, and yet if you are going to TXL in the next few days then you can easily pay £829 for the return, and that's an economy hand baggage only fare! Neither £75, nor £81 nor £829 are mistake fares. TLV's cheapest fare currently showing is £291 in "Find our cheapest flights", whereas the travel agency fares which were cancelled by BA were priced in the £186 to £212 area.
I'll just link in the other thread relevant here, to help other people doing searches on this question:
Mistake fare LHR - TLV [Tickets now cancelled by BA]
Jun 26, 2018, 12:42 am
#17
Original Poster
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 5
Wow, what a comprehensive answer corporate-wage-slave, thanks for taking the time to post 
I've done the detective work you suggested (and learned some very useful skills, thanks!), and the "Fare Details" figure in my e-ticket is just about plausible, in that it is pretty much bang on (£2 above to be precise) the cheapest it gets for this route, across the entire year. And yet... my booking is for Sat-Sat at sensible times (i.e. not red-eye) in school holidays. I've triple-checked the dates. So although BA will technically just about be covering the base cost of the flights, they will have missed out on an enormous premium -- there is no way these flights won't be completely full when they take off. The prices have been sky-high from the moment they went on sale (yes, I set an alarm for 1am on the morning they were first put up), and are again now. Also, I've been monitoring Easyjet and various other airlines, and thus far their prices have all been comparable to BA's, in that none of them has dipped below roughly 10x what I paid. So all in all, I'd like to believe I just got lucky, but it still seems a bit too good to be true. Anyway, I'll be sure to post back here if they do cancel. Thanks again!
I've done the detective work you suggested (and learned some very useful skills, thanks!), and the "Fare Details" figure in my e-ticket is just about plausible, in that it is pretty much bang on (£2 above to be precise) the cheapest it gets for this route, across the entire year. And yet... my booking is for Sat-Sat at sensible times (i.e. not red-eye) in school holidays. I've triple-checked the dates. So although BA will technically just about be covering the base cost of the flights, they will have missed out on an enormous premium -- there is no way these flights won't be completely full when they take off. The prices have been sky-high from the moment they went on sale (yes, I set an alarm for 1am on the morning they were first put up), and are again now. Also, I've been monitoring Easyjet and various other airlines, and thus far their prices have all been comparable to BA's, in that none of them has dipped below roughly 10x what I paid. So all in all, I'd like to believe I just got lucky, but it still seems a bit too good to be true. Anyway, I'll be sure to post back here if they do cancel. Thanks again!
Jun 26, 2018, 1:17 am
#18
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: London
Posts: 201
If the price you have paid is the same as is still available on other dates then BA would have a hard time convincing a judge that it was a "clear & manifest error". It may well have been a slip up on their behalf releasing cheap fare buckets during school holidays or it may have been that sales were a bit lower than expected (perhaps due to competition from a LCC if you're flying from Gatwick). Either way, from what you have told us I would be happy booking non-refundable hotels etc. at this stage especially as it sounds like this wasn't a "deal" publicised by the blogs & therefore, mistake or otherwise, BA isn't on the hook for a significant enough loss to warrant potentially further bad PR!
Jun 26, 2018, 1:42 am
#19
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: LON
Programs: BAEC
Posts: 3,916
And if course the other thing to have in place is decent travel insurance, ideally from the moment you book any travel arrangement. You should focus on whether the policy would cover you in the event of an unforseen cancellation - either to cover costs from uncancellable accommodation etc, or to pay to get you to your destination if you can't get that remedy from BA / EU261. It is worth spending a few minutes to review the policy terms so you understand your cover - not all policies are the same - and some that are in the race to the bottom with the cheapest policies might not have the cover that a policy costing a few pounds more does.
Feb 24, 2019, 1:31 am
#20
Original Poster
Join Date: Jun 2018
Posts: 5
They didn't cancel
For those who are interested, I've now flown both legs of the booking in question: it was a family skiing holiday to the French Alps in February half term. 4 passengers, Euro Traveller class (ie with hold luggage), total cost under £350. Also, celeb spot: Dominic Raab and family on both flights.