The airfare alert from Thrifty Traveler a few days before Easter was too good to ignore. Business-class tickets to Europe on Turkish Airlines from as low as $410.
I furiously searched dates on the airline’s website and booked a flight to Milan over Memorial Day weekend. The routing was ridiculous—Vancouver-Montreal-Istanbul-Milan. But the price was beyond right: $550 one way at the start of summer vacation season. Typical business-class fares run at least five times that.
The gelato gods weren’t on my side. Turkish Airlines canceled my ticket 48 hours after I booked it. The fare was what is known as a mistake fare, a price that was incorrectly loaded or the result of a glitch.
Airlines reserve the right to cancel them. (It’s in that legalese called a contract of carriage.) Turkish blamed a technical issue in its pricing system and refunded my money.
Airline fare goofs are rare—Thrifty Traveler has sent 20 mistake fare alerts since 2020. Globe-trotting bargain hunters still smell catnip.
There’s something about beating airlines at their own game, says Kyle Potter , executive editor of Thrifty Traveler. The Turkish deal was its most popular deal of any type so far this year.
“There’s just a rush about that,” Potter says.
I got the rush, not the trip. But that surprisingly puts me in the mistake-fare minority. It turns out airlines generally honor the tickets despite a 2015 U.S. Department of Transportation rule that gave them latitude to cancel.
There’s no hard and fast rule for how quickly, or not, airlines have to act if they are going to cancel a mistake fare. It’s generally thought that if you get past the two-week mark you’re pretty safe. That’s why deals-alert services recommend not booking nonrefundable travel expenses until that point.
Just two of the 20 mistake fare deals Thrifty Traveler has flagged since 2020 were canceled, Potter said. Sadly, that included mine.
Going, a competing flight-deals service formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, sent 16 mistake-fare alerts last year. Just two were canceled. (There are different definitions of what constitutes a mistake fare, but the common denominator is a screaming deal that must be acted on quickly.)
Surviving deals in the past few years have included a $134 round-trip economy fare from the U.S. to Dublin and, just last week, fares as low as $336 round-trip from the West Coast to Asia.
Airlines aren’t honoring the tickets out of the goodness of their hearts, says Going founder Scott Keyes . It’s more a matter of avoiding a potential social-media firestorm and other backlash for canceling a pile of tickets.
“Any money you saved would be overshadowed by the brand equity that you would lose,” he says.
Keyes says Hong Kong Airlines made a whopper of a mistake in 2018, offering round-trip business-class fares to Asia from the U.S. for less than $600. It remains one of his favorite mistake fares even though he didn’t book a ticket.
The airline, which no longer serves the U.S., honored the tickets and turned it into a brilliant social-media campaign, he says.
Potter personally took advantage of that deal, flying to Vietnam with a friend in 2019.
He suspects Turkish would have honored the cheap Europe tickets earlier this month if fuel prices weren’t sky high right now. The airline didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Thrifty Traveler’s mistake-fare fans took the flight cancellation in stride, Potter said. There was disappointment, but no complaints in its online forums. Thrifty Traveler flagged the Turkish deal as a mistake fare and warned subscribers not to immediately make any nonrefundable travel reservations, such as a hotel or return flight, should Turkish not honor it.
“The attitude is almost always, ‘Well, on to the next one,” said Potter.
Tiffany Kahl , who owns a tanning and wellness salon in Pennsylvania, hunts business-class travel deals as a hobby and subscribes to Thrifty Traveler. The service flagged a $1,300 business-class mistake fare from New York to London last fall.
Kahl felt like an insider because she had randomly come across the insane deal while shopping on Google Flights the night before. The fare was only available via Alaska Airlines, but the flight was operated by British Airways, an Alaska partner.
BA was charging $15,000 for the same ticket, so Kahl booked it instantly and crossed her fingers. “I just happened to be at the right place at the right time,” she said.
Kahl and wife Lori Angstadt , who co-owns the salon, flew to England in February on British Airways. The trip wasn’t without last-minute, mistake-fare panic. Their original flight to London was canceled during a blizzard and Kahl feared they would be rebooked in a different cabin given the rock-bottom fare.
The airline offered some options in premium economy but she kept searching until she found business-class seats. She has a bad back and only flies business class on flights over four hours. “I’m very bougie that way.‘’
I’d call that bargain bougie.
Write to Dawn Gilbertson at dawn.gilbertson@wsj.com
