Airline glitch has travelers buying first class tickets for P50,000 from P918,000
Japanese airline All Nippon Airways (ANA) had a currency conversion error, resulting in travelers paying for as low as $890 (P50,000) in first-class flights worth P16,300 (P918,000).
Bloomberg reported that others also grabbed business flight tickets for a few hundred dollars instead of the usual $10,000 (P563,000) or so.
ANA Holdings said its Vietnam website had an error that caused the incorrect conversion rates. The company said it was “investigating the cause of the bug and the size of its damage."
A spokesperson for ANA initially said the airline would honor the tickets already purchased, according to Bloomberg, though the company later on clarified that will make a final decision by the end of April.
The discounted tickets will still be valid for the people who will fly before that decision is made, ANA added.
The cheapened tickets mainly came from Jakarta in Indonesia to Japan, and then to New York and back again to Southeast Asian destinations like Singapore and Bali.
This isn't the first time an airline mistakenly sold tickets at a lower price.
In 2019, Cathay Pacific Airways sold first and business-class tickets from Vietnam to the United States for $675 (P38,000) instead of the usual $16,000. The airline honored the fares, according to Bloomberg.