A little over 24 hours after Cathay Pacific mistakenly sold first and business class tickets at economy price online, the Hong Kong-based carrier finally broke its silence and said that will honor all of such transactions. The technical error is expected to translate to millions in losses, but the airline was gracious and humble on social media, even tweeting with the hashtags #LessonLearnt and #PromiseMadePromiseKept.
The South China Morning Post interviewed 11 of the people who happened upon the computer glitch and bought eight business-class and 18 first class seats at economy-seat rates. In total, they paid HK$216,925, when they should have paid about HK$5.4 million (US$685,800) if it had been priced correctly. It is believed that thousands of tickets of the same nature were purchased during the error.
Cathay Pacific was silent about the issue for 24 hours before finally speaking up on its Twitter account saying that it will keep its promise and treat the transactions as valid. The company has reportedly laid the blame on one of its staff who had entered wrong details into the system for flights between the United States and Vietnam.
This is not the first time that a computer glitch turned an otherwise expensive flight into an unbelievably cheap one. In 2017, Hong Kong Airlines mistakenly sold business class seats for just HK$4,600 for flights from Los Angeles to Bangkok and Shanghai. At regular pricing, those seats would have cost HK$30,000. The airline admitted its error and honored all bookings. Singapore Airlines also made the same mistake in 2014 when it approved the flights of 400 passengers on business class even after they were charged only economy seat rates for a flight between Asia and Europe.
On the other hand, there have also been instances when the computer glitch was not honored by an airline. In June 2018, for instance, British Airways erroneously sold tickets for £1 each for flights between the UK and Tel Aviv, Dubai, and other locations. Instead of honoring tickets, The Independent reported that the airline said that they will issue a refund plus a voucher worth £100 which can be used for future travels. The vouchers were only to be used with the travel agencies with whom the erroneous bookings were made.
