A computer glitch which allowed transatlantic flights tickets to be bought for extremely low prices, forced United Airlines to cancel thousands of bookings.
The glitch, first spotted by money saving site DansDeals, caused first and business class tickets sold through the airline’s Danish website to be drastically mispriced. For instance, a round trip from Heathrow to New York for two, which costs £6118.92 on the British site, was sold for just 974 Danish Krone, less than £100.
Passengers were able to purchase some first-class return tickets for under $100 (£65) via the Danish section of the site because of an incorrect currency exchange rate. Is it a human error or computer glitch, either way United said it would not honour the fares because the error was caused by a “third party software provider”. Customers have criticised its decision as they bought their airline travel ticket in good faith.
The computer failure was first mentioned in a travel blog which became viral on Wednesday and prompted thousands of people to try and snap up the low-cost deals.
The Dansdeal advised passengers to avail of the cheap tickets by choosing Denmark as the billing country and “using a card that doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee”.
A round-trip between London Heathrow and Honolulu in Hawaii was available for 591 Danish Kroner ($89; £58), it said. The flights would usually cost around $6,000 (£4,000).
In a statement United said the majority of bookings originated in the UK and the level made with Danish Kroner as the local currency “was significantly higher than normal”, We will void the bookings for those who purchased tickets as a result of a third-party currency conversion error.
“Most of these bookings were for travel originating in the United Kingdom, and the level of bookings made with Danish Krone as the local currency was significantly higher than normal during the limited period that customers made these bookings.”
Given the price of first class tickets, even if the number of customers taking advantage of the glitch was at the low end of the “several thousand” number, the company’s potential losses were still easily in the tens of millions of dollars.
In an email to all affected customers, United confirmed the cancellations: “You purchased a ticket through the Danish version of united.com during the time when the prices were incorrect. As a result, we are not able to honour your ticket at the price that you paid. We have voided your reservation and will not process your payment.”
United is not new pricing glitches, as previously, United decided to honour tickets accidentally sold for free. In September 2013, the airline listed tickets with a price of $0, and was forced to shut its booking system entirely to stop haemorrhaging tickets, while those tickets remained valid, although the airline did not reveal how many it had actually given away.