British Airways won’t honor too-good-to-be-true India fares

For a brief, shining moment last Friday evening — well, two hours actually — British Airways apparently had coach roundtrip fares from U.S. cities to India for $40 to $100, plus taxes and fees.

The fares had been loaded incorrectly, but travel agents were able to issue tickets before the airline corrected them.

This sort of thing has happened before, and often airlines honor the fares, deciding that the potential negative publicity would outweigh the losses on the tickets. Presumably these days too, the additional revenue from baggage, food, drinks and seat assignments etc, has to soften the blow.

In any case, British Airways has taken an alternate approach. They say in a letter to travel agents, some not sent out until Wednesday afternoon, that they moved immediately to “correct these fares,” but that the “system update is not immediate.”

As the fares were so clearly below the normal fare levels, British Airways is unable to honor these bookings. We have cancelled all affected bookings made during this two-hour window, and will make a full refund for any paid for and issued ticket.

The airline also “sincerely” apologizes, and also says they will “refund any fees associated with the rebooking of other airline segments” booked on the same ticket. Anyone who booked flights in conjunction with the India reservations, but on a separate ticket, is out of luck.

Admittedly, anyone who booked one of these fares had to think there was a very good chance it was a mistake. So booking anything else nonrefundable in connection with the ticket, from internal flights within the US or India, to hotels or land arrangements, would have been risky.

Although, British Airways, by waiting until Tuesday or Wednesday to make and announce this decision, certainly put more of these travelers at risk. Travel agents generally have a 24 hour window to cancel a ticket without penalty. Which means that say, if a client waited a day or two to add other flights, they would be too late.

And were these fares ridiculous? Of course. But this is a time when major airlines trumpet $99 flights from the U.S. to Europe in winter, (Not of course highlighting the additional fees and taxes,) And within the U.S. full page ads routinely say things like “Nationwide fare sale starting at $29.” (Not of course in this case saying that these apply to maybe two city-pairs only, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.).

Moreover, British Airways, in matching some of the European discount carriers, currently does offer seats between London and Frankfurt, for example, for UK£5 one way. Again plus tax etc, nonrefundable, and very very limited, but that fare is legitimate.

Travel agents and sophisticated travelers almost certainly knew this “sale” was different and a mistake. But it’s in some ways hard to expect a traveling public bombarded with other offers that sound too good to be true to tell the difference.

I almost have to wonder, if the airline honored the fares, and even said that they might do a few unannounced instant crazy fares on their Web site in future on purpose, if the whole episode might not have served as a public relations bonanza.

Admittedly such a sale would have to be very short-term – as in under an hour, even half an hour – or limited to a very few seats per plane, since the internet spreads the word so quickly. But it certainly would drive bargain hunters regularly to the BA.com site.

In any case, the decision has been made, and no doubt British Airways will have more than a few complicated problems to sort out in addition to the goodwill issues. No word on if the programmer who made the error is still amongst the ranks of the employed, or if this was their parting good-bye shot.