Delta to honor extremely cheap mistake fares
NEW YORK - Some lucky fliers capitalized on a computer glitch Thursday and scored some really cheap flights on Delta Air Lines (DAL).
From about 10 a.m. to noon ET, certain
Delta fares on the airline's own
website and other airfare booking sites were showing up incorrectly, offering
some savvy bargain hunters incredible deals. A roundtrip flight between
Cincinnati and Minneapolis for February was being sold for just $25.05 and a
roundtrip between Cincinnati and Salt Lake City for $48.41. The correct price
for both of those fares is more than $400.
Trebor Banstetter, a spokesman for the
Atlanta-based airline, said the problem has been fixed but "Delta will honor any fares purchased at the
incorrect price."
Jackie Fanelli, 27, learned about the
super cheap fares from a friend's Facebook page. She attempted to purchase a
$98 roundtrip first-class ticket from her home city of Baltimore to Honolulu on
Priceline.com but the transaction didn't process before the deal was shut down.
"It was too good to be
true," Fanelli said. "I try to go away every other year and this was
not the year."
Delta's website was having
lingering problems from the increased traffic Thursday afternoon.
"It looks like Delta's programmers had a little too much
eggnog yesterday," joked George Hobica, founder of AirfareWatchDog.com,
which promotes airfare sales.
It's likely that the airline tried to
tweak its fares with a $10 or $20 system-wide change and a junior programmer
made a mistake or two, he said.
"People just go wild. People have
been bragging about booking six first-class tickets to Hawaii," Hobica
said. "People hate the airlines so much that when this happens, they say:
I'm going to get back at you for the time you broke my suitcase and didn't pay
for it."
Other airlines have faced the same
issue. In September United Airlines experienced an error in filing fares to its computer system. Many customers got tickets for $5 or $10, paying only the cost
of the Sept. 11 security fee.
New Department of Transportation
regulations, aimed at truth in advertising, require airlines to honor any
mistake fares offered.