Jumpgate

The US web site is all messed up right now. Wait until morning.

cedric

It's pretty much a sign of business as usual, actually

mtacchi

I called them tonight to confirm my bookings and was told they would be honored. The individuals having issues are those who booked through AA.com

jetsetter

The airlines operate under a whole separate series of laws, rules, and regulations. There may be DOT regulations that require carriers to honor tickets once issued. I know in the pre-internet days if an airline accidentally aedvertised say a $2 fare, they must honor the rate on the day that it is advertised in the newspaper but then they can retract it the next day. This came up in the 90's with a CO fare from BOS to the west coast, but they ednded up having to honor tickets bought the day the mistyped add ran in the newspaper. I missed out on this too, just finding out at 9AM Sun. Really I would pay $30 a year if there was some service that could beep you when there is somthing like this because I have missed all such deals even though I am on the board quite a bit.

rbAA

This one doesn't look like a mistake. I always look at the zero dollar fares and pass. In this case, I checked a number of different city pairs and they all had $2 as the base fare. Now, I can understand a single destination having a fare mistyped, but in this case, there were $2 fares to LEB, ART, HHH, AVL and many more. There is a post in the MR forum about new rural service startups needed 10,000 pax in order to get the, generous, govt subsidies. Pretty sure they got their 10,000 pax just from FT.

If US honors these, I have renewal of my LH SEN for about $400, flying 2 trips in coach and 5 in FC. Slightly better than the $1500 SEN cost me last year.

sbtinme

Still kicking myself for not knowing that F fares were also included on this one from LEB. So, I'm headed to LAS in E+.

Could be worse, I guess.

But knowing that F was out there LEB-LAS-LEB for $45 r/t is making me crazy!

gnaget

Yes, this was 1993 on CO; I flew BOS-IAH-LAX-DEN-BOS. I think they were $49 or something like that. CO had dropped the first digit in the print ad. My friend was at a travel agent on Boylston St. buying some other tickets and the agent had booked the CO tickets to LAX for some other people. They were supposed to come in and pay for them by the end of the day, which was rapidly approaching. He would give them to us if the people never showed up.....

I got my confirmation email from Usair.com at 05:30 EDT afterbuying ART tickets around 13:00 the day before. It's been ages since I bought a ticket on US but I recall that one would get an email quite quickly (it says within 4 hours).

seat 50J

They only weigh the bags see if they can charge you. However, they use only a standard weight (190 lbs.?) for calculating each passenger and bags. So they may overload the plane. Don't do it!

longing4piedmont

Trust me on this one. It was a mistake.

PineyBob

These issues that occur are one of the reasons airline management HATES us.

They love us on full fare coach, but they fail to realize that their blatant attempts to gouge regular flyers creates the type of "feeding frenzy" we witnessed here. Mistakes are pounced on and customers insist the airline honor the fare.

I can't help but wonder if US had a more rational fare structure that was percieved to be "reasonable" if they would have seen the run on tickets they did or if people would have realized it was a mistake and cut them a break.

Let's see if the CCY Hall of Mirrors can blame the rampers for this latest debacle?

planeluvr

Nope, FT'ers pounce on these mistakes and do not care what airline is involved. It is the price and miles, baby! Nice try.

channa

Nah, it's the Internet that enables the communication of these things, and automation that moves the transactions through.

The Internet that is supposed to save so much in terms of ticket distribution costs, can also cost them a lot when it enables people get in on these deals. 10-15 years ago, few would have been aware of it, and had a phone agent seen it, they never would have quoted it, and instead alerted a supervisor. Even a travel agent may not have booked it, as it's the airline's hand that fed them back then.

Today the website autoprices things, and tickets get issued within minutes, not at the end of the day after review by a ticketer. Further, with outsourced call centers becoming common, I wouldn't be surprised if an India rep would see such a fare, not realize what it was, quote it, and sell it to someone who called. Again, there are associated risks with outsourcing as well.

99.99% of the time these methods save them money. Yesterday they didn't.

magiciansampras

Maybe I'm retarded, but why don't they program the system to put in simple checks. One check, for example, is to make sure that NO TICKET SELLS FOR $2. You could have a bottom price per ticket, maybe $50, and make sure nothing sells below that. Why don't they do this?

sbtinme

I can only assume this poster was joking. Give me an enormous break. $2 from NH to LAX? $45 for FIRST CLASS r/t?!?!? This will not cover the cost of soda and ice for pax in Y. Keep in mind, there were many many (maybe even a majority) who booked US code share flights on UA. Remember that revenue, then, is due to UA from US. Since the error was US's fault, US will have to ante up major $$$s to UA that will not come from the paying public who are flying for $2.

THIS WILL COST US A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR CODE SHARE FLIGHTS. CASE CLOSED!

The only way plausible to suggest that this was a way to drum up business in smaller EAS markets (hello, HHH is not one of those!!!) would be if fares were in the $99 range one-way anywhere domestically, etc.

I'm having a very hard time understanding how anyone could think that an airline so incredibly close to total default and collapse would issue out $1.68 r/t fares from select markets where they have almost no capacity in the first place. Keep in mind, too, that US will likely be responsible for issuing standard revenue to COLGAN AIR for their services on behalf of US to LEB, etc.

pitflyer

I can only wonder the meetings in USAirways Revenue Management at 8am on Monday.

Someone's going to have to write up a superbly detailed TPS report on this one.