Vasco Pridat

Haha. Not for me..it was 1560eur for one and over 4k per person for 2 on momondo.
I'm still surprised everyone just takes the refund and thinks this is OK.. Hmm

oneworld82

I am not taking the refund just yet, my flight isn't until November 2nd. I just do not know what my options are...

Cestamitulakapohvezdach

Guys, I am in this game with you. With two tickets for November 9 I am willing to go to court. I did not when AZ J fares were rebooked to Y but now it is really worth I think. Return La Premiére ticket to GRU for 2000 EUR...
First of all you should discuss your case with European Consumer Centre.

I am from the Czech republic where custumers were able to fly their first class tickets and won their cases in court against British Airways.
I think that I have paid for some service and they should follow it. It is the same if I would paid with Skoda cars for Superb and get Fabia for that price. What airlines afford doing to custumers is rubish and we should stop it! Let's head to courts!

WorldLux

But if the Superb is advertised for 15€ because the English apprenticed got confused and used "," in lieu of "."? There is a case for those that booked but I wouldn't get my hopes up. It will take a lot of time, money and energy to potentially win the case.

palmanfr

In your example, the mistake would be a factor of 1000x. Here, we are talking about "only" half price... Maybe not even that... Fares ex-IST, OTP, SOF, ATH, CAI or TUN are known to be cheaper than from Western Europe. That's a fact. Same goes for ex-Scandinavia. The tickets were not sold for 20 Turkish liras... AF should have done their job releasing correct fares instead of spending time planning strikes. In ANY other business, those mistakes would be to the benefit of the customer. Only airlines (and maybe banks) are allowed to consistently f*** up with their own rules and can escape free of charge. And it's not the first time with AF, looks like they are not learning from their mistakes. I did not book this one as I was not in a position to fly it in a short time, but I did book last December the SFO-LHR deal and the refund process was very messy. It is time for a stricter regulation on this IMHO.

roelb

This is not a case of misplaced decimal poimts or an order of magnitude difference. People paid decent fares, about what you would expect to pay for a restricted business class fare. Not that far fetched to think this was a promotion for first class, which on AF is more often than not, an mostly empty cabin.

Most passengers will not be able to distinguish between tje value of a restricted and flexible fare. So the question whether an average consumer could or should have known this was an error is not answered that easily.

I would not be surprised that AF, faced with actual litigation, chooses to settle by honoring the ticket. The risk of a ruling in favor of the consumer is real and having that jurisprudence out there would not be to their advantage. And honoring the tickets of the few people that actually go through with litigation will cost them far less than going to court.

xray

Email from AF when I clicked on link on the Orbitz email indicating that I don't accept the modification to Y...

"On the 4th of May 2018, a technical issue resulted in the booking of an incorrect cabin of transportation when booking and paying a fully flexible economy class ticket on the websites for a travel departing from Turkey. Air France has corrected the error. The

tickets that you booked at the erroneous fares have modified for a travel in Economy class cabin.

We understand that you may have been charged with bank fees while purchasing these tickets and/or may have engaged non-refundable expenses related to your trip before the modification of the tickets, and, if you do not want to travel in Economy class,

we would like to inform you that these may be refunded under specific conditions. For us to consider your request, kindly fill in the web form available on our websites."

hkgg

AF is selling ALG/CMN/TUN to PEK/SHA/HKG for around 3.500-3.600€ return in First. Are we to suppose that those are also "erroneous"? That is only marginally more expensive than the person who paid 1.269€ for a one way...

Vasco Pridat

The thing is. I have a confirmed first class ticket. How long am I supposed to wait now for booking my hotels and rentals and everything around..? Because I fear my flight gets downgraded a week before I fly? Or maybe at the airport?? That's rediculous.. Because I had never paid 1600 euros for an economy ticket
They wanna tell me, you can't get first for 1.6? Well I tell you.. I def never fly eco for 1.6.. Now which price is farther apart from reality .
​​​​

roelb

That is the main issue. This is getting to a point where you can't trust an issued ticket anymore. How can a consumer know whether a fare is a real offer, or an error? I've recently made a reservation for a return AMS-SCL in J for about half the "normal" price, if there is such a thing as a "normal" price. I'm sure this fare isn't an error, but simply a citypair with a good deal at the moment. But if they would call it an "error" I would have no recourse? That just doesn't feel right.

Sure, in case of an obvious mistake such as a misplaced decimal point and a resulting fare that is an order of magnitude less, then I agree that the airline should be able to cancel the ticket. But even then an airline should catch such errors prior to issuing tickets. It is not that hard to identify outliers and flag those for manual verification prior to issuing the ticket.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

All of the arguments for and against error fares have been discussed comprehensively in other error fare threads.

The arguments are that people will never be able to trust a fare again. Or how would anyone possibly know it's a mistake. And so on.

The answer is that it all depends. A fare of $1500 TATL might be fine in business class, even on a top tier carrier. A fare of $2600 on AF, that rarely, if ever, discounts that far, might give rise to some suspicion that the fare might be an error.

Airline process millions of tickets a day. What some people are proposing is that for the sake of a few error fares, no one should have their ticket issued for one, two or three days (allowing for time differences and weekends) while an airline checks the fare they are about to issue is error free. That would be unworkable.

AF has acted quickly here. In previous error threads people have complained the airline did't take action fast enough. They said 'if only the airline notified us in two days rather than two weeks it would have made things better'. Now AF acts in 2 days and people still complain.

The bottom line is very simple. If you have genuinely purchased a correct fare, it will be honoured. Either by the airline voluntarily, by contract law, or by consumer protection law. If you have purchased a fare which you suspect might be an error, your chances of being protected might be rather less. And that's fair enough. It's exactly how the law is supposed to work. It's there to protect and enforce rights, not to punish an airline.

Vasco Pridat

Well said..! I didn't see this advertised as an error fare and me, I truly believed I was just getting a great deal because it starts in turkey. I have seen first aptm of ethihad from Cairo at that price. Af is having problems . Why shouldn't they do what everyone else does? Anyway. I'm not a lawyer. But I will at least consult one because I am curious.
As a private person I once sold a knife on ebay as mint.. And the buyer disagreed and showed me 2 scratches. I offered to take it back. But he had the right to receive a mint knife as he bought. I had to buy a new one and give it to him.
And now I get an offer for a first class ticket. I buy it. AND it gets confirmed by the airline. The deal is complete . I want my mint knife. Keep us posted.

Goldorak

palmanfr

well... I read a while ago that Lufthansa has about 400 first class customers a day (in total, considering both paid and reward tickets). I can deduct that about 400 tickets are sold daily. I also expect that AF is smaller than LH in that respect and will transport less passengers in first daily. I honestly believe that manually processing/issuing a few hundred first class tickets daily is not unworkable. Also, bear in mind that this week has a lot of bank holidays in many European countries including France : yesterday was a day off, tomorrow also... So I guess it will take more time to "revalidate" the tickets than usual (in case this is handled in Europe of course)

roelb

I did not propose that, and I didn't read that from anyone else.

What I have said is that it would not be that complex to determine, through an automated system, whether a reservation is an outlier, or suspect. If the algorithm determines a reservation - and therefore a fare base - is suspect, the system should not not ticket it automatically but flag it for manual verifification. A good algorithm would have few false positives and reviewing a handful of tickets daily will cost far less then fixing anything afterwards. This is basic system design and I am really surprised that errors such as these still exist.

I don't think that the argument, mentioned above, that Air France "rarely discounts" there F fares and therefore a consumer should know a return fare over $2k is "too low" will hold up in court. I hope it doesn't. A consumer should be able to trust pricing and should not need to have any knowledge about the marketing and pricing policy of a certain airline. Obvious errors - sure - but at these prices it's not so obvious IMHO.

An average passenger, looking for a business class ticket on this route, gets the offer of First at a 15% discount over Business on the Airfrance website and thinks: hey, cool, AF is running a First class promotion, let's try that. The green "Lowest fare" sticker helps draw him to that cabin.

They gave people boarding passes. People started travel, made plans, and were denied their booked cabin _post checkin_! That, in my view, should never happen, whatever your view is on the legalitiy of cancelling future tickets.