$10,000 Asia-US business class tickets get sold for $300 after airline blunder
After a currency conversion error, some savvy travellers snatched up very cheap tickets of All Nippon Airways' most luxurious cabins. One paid just $890 for first class flights that took them from Jakarta to the Caribbean through Tokyo and New York and back again.
Normally, the 14,500 km (9,000 miles) flight in first class on ANA would cost close to 20 times as much. Others were able to purchase business class tickets for just a few hundred dollars instead of the standard $10,000 or so, thanks to social media platforms spreading the news of the glitch, reports Bloomberg.
The error, according to ANA Holdings Ltd, was caused by a typo on its Vietnam website, which displayed an incorrect currency conversion. On Wednesday, it said it was "investigating the cause of the bug and the scope of its damage," but it did not specify how many individuals had purchased discounted tickets.
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An ANA spokeswoman initially said the airline would honour the tickets for customers who purchased them, but the carrier then stated that a final decision had not been made, but that one would be made by the end of the month. Those who fly before that choice is made, will still be able to use the discounted tickets.
The majority of the tickets were for travel from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, to Japan, New York, and then back to different Southeast Asian locations, including Singapore and Bali, according to multiple persons who talked with Bloomberg News.
An online travel agent named Herman Yip claimed to have purchased a round-trip first-class ticket from Jakarta to Aruba via Tokyo and New York.
Johnny Wong, an employee in the aviation sector, claimed he paid 13 million dong ($550) for a round-trip business class ticket from Jakarta to Honolulu via Tokyo's Narita Airport.
"I never thought I'd catch such a deal," Wong said. The 29-year-old claimed he felt under pressure to submit his information as quickly as possible since ANA might not have time to catch its mistake. The current fare is $8,200.
It is not the first time an airline has unintentionally offered first-class seats at a significant discount.
In 2019, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd mistakenly offered first- and business-class tickets from Vietnam to the US for as little as $675 when the regular cost would have been as high as $16,000. The fares were honoured.
