Airline asked to reimburse US-India $40 ticket costs

Airport news for Flights,Travel on 03/12/2009.

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To combat the mighty effects of the post-recession blues, many airlines have been offering unbeatable prices. In a price war to lure customers and fill in airline seats, many airlines have come up with various offers.

One airline offered customers two seats for the price of one in the business class. Some airlines chose to do away with the business class entirely as these were the last class to attract clientele.

Unfortunately for British Airways though, a super-deal that attracted thousands of passengers to their booking website was nothing but the result of a human typing error.

Tickets between the US and India were sold at rock bottom prices in November. This attracted the biggest amounts of buyers who held hopes that those tickets would be valid. Not surpirsingly, news of the offer—forty dollars on return tickets to India spread like fire, and hundreds of seats were snapped up before the airline realised what had happened and withdrew the ‘offer’. This ticket was supposed to be all inclusive of other prices even of fuel surcharges.

This rate was declared on its website and was online for an entire day before the airline supposedly realized its mistake. The total original price on this route is actually 400 dollars.

The carrier then sent out notices saying that they would not be honouring the prices as it was obviously a mistake. Quite a few passengers were miffed at this refusal; and tried to convince the airline otherwise.

However, the airline maintained its stand as the price was ridiculously low. The passengers then complained to the Department of Transportation(DoT) in the US. The DoT, after a thorough investigation, revealed that a number of customers went ahead and made further bookings on hotel accommodations, onward flights and even car rental bookings. British Airways has now been asked to reimburse passengers. Compensation for penalty of other bookings is also to be paid out by BA.

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