For those of you who were thinking of flying in Business or First Class thanks to the seemingly too cheap fares that were being sold by United Airlines for departures from the UK and in Danish Kroner, United has a bit of bad news for you:
We will void the bookings for those who purchased tickets as a result of a third-party currency conversion error. http://t.co/KBaXBJCwoQ
— United (@united) February 11, 2015
The airline goes on to say:
United is voiding the bookings of several thousand individuals who were attempting to take advantage of an error a third-party software provider made when it applied an incorrect currency exchange rate, despite United having properly filed its fares. Most of these bookings were for travel originating in the United Kingdom, and the level of bookings made with Danish Kroner as the local currency was significantly higher than normal during the limited period that customers made these bookings.
For those of you who want to travel in posh seats on the cheap, this isn’t a way of doing it.
However, I sure a lot of people will feel entitled to travel in First Class for $51 or so… and I suspect the lawyers will be sniffing around this.
However much United Airlines want this to be over, I suspect the keying of the mistake conversion rate is just the beginning…
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“several thousand individuals ” really? come on… they dont have that many seats.
Dang it, thought they would for *sure take a $5-10 million hit for this! Oh well..
@steve
The tickets weren’t just on United. United, Lufthansa, and Swiss offer several thousand premium cabin seats a day. Multiply that by the whole schedule and there can be hundreds of thousands of individuals getting a seat.
we’ll see what DoT has to say about this …
Most of the purchases were made from outside Denmark, and from what I’ve seen reported so far, that website has in its terms of service a provision that it’s only eligible for use by customers with a Danish billing address. Many people were able to make purchases anyway, but the TOS violation likely gives them legal cover for cancelation, at least for anyone who can’t substantiate they are actually Danish residents.