Travelers score cheap first class flights from Australia to US due to Qantas disruption

CNN
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Last Thursday, first-class return tickets from Australia to the US, which normally cost AU$28,000 (about $19,000), were briefly available at a whopping 85% discount on Qantas.

A programming error allowed about 300 lucky people to buy them on the airline’s website for just $3,400 each. The error was subsequently corrected.

“Unfortunately, this is a case where the price was too good to be true,” Qantas said in a statement on Thursday.

But not all hope is lost. Instead of cancelling the tickets, Qantas said it would rebook customers to business class “as a goodwill gesture” at no extra cost. Alternatively, passengers unhappy with business class can get a full refund.

A Qantas business class flight between Australia and the United States typically costs around $11,000.

Qantas’ goodwill gesture follows a similar blunder that the airline handled differently last year.

Last August, Australian regulators accused Qantas in a lawsuit of selling tickets for more than 8,000 flights that the airline had already cancelled, affecting more than 86,000 passengers.

Qantas agreed in May to a settlement of nearly $80 million, of which more than $13 million was awarded to affected customers.

CEO Vanessa Hudson told CNN in June that the company had “failed our customers and our staff.”

Airlines regularly make mistakes and sell premium tickets at a blatantly low price, although some airlines choose to honor that mistake.

In 2019, Cathay Pacific offered first and business class seats from Vietnam to North American cities for a return flight starting from just $675.

Hong Kong’s national airline welcomed the deal by tweeting the hashtags #promisemadepromisekept and #lessonlearnt on its X account.

But that’s not always the case. In 2010, American Airlines refused to honor first-class round-trip tickets from the U.S. to Australia worth up to $20,000 that it was selling for the economy-class price of $1,100. Instead, it offered $200 in vouchers as compensation.

A year earlier, British Airways also refused to honor flights from North America to India worth $40, offering $300 vouchers instead.