FOR A few hours on Wednesday, the hottest ticket in travel was to Cyprus after an airline mistake led online travel agencies accidentally to post a Toronto to Larnaca flight for US$39.
Italian airline Alitalia accidentally listed the business-class flight on a central reservation system which feeds flight information to online booking agencies, said Brian Hoyt, director of public relations for Chicago-based Orbitz, the third-largest online travel agency based on gross bookings.
“We’re in a global world of e-commerce where we’re working on virtual platforms, and there have been infrequent occasions when incorrect pricing appears online,” Hoyt said.
The round-trip airfare from Toronto to Cyprus, with a stop to switch planes in Italy, was available for multiple departing dates, Hoyt said.
“When red flags were set off, we pulled the rate, we got in contact with the airline in question, we had a conversation with them about what had occurred,” Hoyt said.
“What the airline agreed to do was honour all of the fares that had been ticketed through Orbitz.com.”
The catch is that some travellers who booked on the site will have received confirmation numbers, but not have been ticketed.
“You may get initial confirmation from Orbitz, but until you get the airline confirmation that we tell you we are going to send to you eventually, you’re not officially ticketed,” Hoyt said.
Some travel shoppers who booked around the time the error was discovered will not have been ticketed, he said.
But Alitalia is honouring “the vast majority of the tickets that were booked through Orbitz,” he said. “Alitalia has really done the stand-up thing here.”
Orbitz will refund those customers who paid a service fee to the website but were not ticketed.
Apparently a worker forgot to enter in two extra digits on the system, an Alitalia spokeswoman said.
The regular business fare on that route is $2,258.
Those that managed to get these tickets are lucky bastards! With $39 you can't even go from Larnaca to Paphos!!
