Australia’s Qantas Airline Offers Business Class Rebooking After Major Ticketing Error
Australian airline Qantas mistakenly discounted first-class round-trip tickets to the United States by a staggering 85%, allowing around 300 fortunate customers to purchase tickets for as low as $3,400, CNN reports.
The flights, which typically cost up to 28,000 Australian dollars (about $19,000), were incorrectly priced on the airline’s website due to a coding error.
“Unfortunately, this is a case where the fare was actually too good to be true,” Qantas said in a statement.
Rather than canceling the tickets, the airline opted for a goodwill gesture, offering to rebook the affected customers in business class at no additional cost. Passengers who prefer not to fly business class will receive full refunds.
Flying business class on Qantas for trips between Australia and the United States usually costs around $11,000, making the airline’s offer a major upgrade for those who snagged the discounted tickets.
This decision comes in light of Qantas’ history with customer service issues. Last August, the airline faced legal action from Australian regulators for selling tickets for over 8,000 flights that had already been canceled, affecting more than 86,000 passengers. In May, Qantas agreed to pay nearly $80 million to settle the lawsuit, with more than $13 million being awarded to those impacted. CEO Vanessa Hudson publicly admitted the airline had “let our customers down” during that incident.
Errors in ticket pricing are not uncommon in the airline industry, with some airlines choosing to honor these mispriced fares. For example, in 2019, Cathay Pacific successfully offered first- and business-class seats from Vietnam to North America for as low as $675 round-trip, and the airline honored those fares, tweeting, “#promisemadepromisekept” and “#lessonlearnt.”
However, not all airlines have taken similar actions. In 2010, American Airlines chose not to honor first-class tickets from the US to Australia that were mistakenly sold for the price of an economy class ticket, instead offering $200 vouchers as compensation. Likewise, British Airways faced backlash when it failed to uphold $40 tickets from North America to India, opting instead to provide $300 vouchers.
