Qantas Mistakenly Offers Massive Discount On First-Class Tickets

(RTTNews) - Qantas Airways Ltd. (QAN.AX) mistakenly offered first-class tickets on flights between Australia and the U.S. at a huge discount of upto 85 percent on August 22 due to a technical glitch on its website.

The Australia-based airline said it would offer refunds or rebook flights for the hundreds of passengers who purchased the tickets at the reduced price.

"Unfortunately, this is a case where the fare was actually too good to be true," a spokesperson for the Australian airline said.

"As a gesture of goodwill, we're rebooking customers in business class at no additional cost," the spokesperson added. "Customers also have the option of a full refund."

During the eight-hour glitch period, the first-class tickets were listed at less than $5,000 return, which was about $15,000 cheaper than usual. They were priced at about 65 percent cheaper rate than the business class fares.

Responding to the incident, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said, "If a business becomes aware of a genuine error, it should fix the mistake immediately," The Guardian reports.

"Businesses are entitled to withdraw an offer or product from sale to correct inaccurate pricing or other incorrect information. The ACL (Australian Consumer Law) doesn't require businesses to honor incorrectly advertised offers."

In a similar incident, Cathay Pacific accidentally offered $16,000 business-class seats for $675 in 2019, but decided to honor the tickets for the passengers who had booked them, according to BBC.