TICKETS CANCELLED: BA fare error: First Class to Asia £795, Sydney £1335

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• James67 says:

  20 Aug20 August 13:00

  Covered for my KUL flights. I will not be surprised to see BA cancel these; there is now ample evidence of airlines now being able to do so, even in USA

• kt1974 says:

  20 Aug20 August 13:03

  Grrrr, call me ungrateful, but these kinds of fare mistakes do irritate me. There aren’t exactly many First seats available to KUL or SYD every day, and, by honouring mistake fares (presumably the entire A class inventory to KUL and SYD for the next 9 months…), this limits the future availability of these seats on published fares (including ex-EU sale fares and Avios redemptions). That’s a real shame for legitimate travellers.

  • Bob Hope says:

    20 Aug20 August 13:13

    Aren’t we all “legitimate travellers”?? I often get influence to fly based on price or a sale.

    • kt1974 says:

      20 Aug20 August 13:21

      Actually, no. This was a clear mistake fare and not intended for purchase. I actually do fly to KUL and SYD on a regular basis and do fly paid F and J, which I buy during periodic BA sales or using Avios. If these aren’t available to me, then I won’t fly BA, I’ll fly a competitor.

      If this fare wasn’t available you would fly.

      Ergo, if I was BA, I would cancel all these fares, as it is within their Ts&Cs to do so, and because the opportunity cost is worth taking some flak from a few noisy Flyertalkers for a day or two. But that’s just my view 🙂

  • cheekychappie says:

    20 Aug20 August 19:05

    Ungrateful barsteward 🙂

• Kevin says:

  20 Aug20 August 13:07

  Had a reservation agreed on 1 Feb to SYD. Now BA.com not showing this (or any of my other) flights and no pending transaction on the AMEX card.
  Keeping fingers crossed, but not too hopeful.

  • Sam says:

    20 Aug20 August 13:13

    Seems to be a BA bug as my flights to Barbabos (booked with full price cash) aren’t showing either. Just press add a booking and they appear back in my BA account. Hope that helps

    • Kevin says:

      21 Aug21 August 00:58

      Now reappeared, thanks Sam.

• Redkitty says:

  20 Aug20 August 13:08

  Hi thanks Raffles for this heads up as I managed to get a ticket to see my sister in Perth. Hoping very hard BA honours the fare. It would be amazing if they did as I haven’t seen her in 7 years. I know the advice is to wait to see if BA honours the fare but I wanted to plan my budget for departing ex-FRA.

  I have a question for the experts on this site, how would it work if I had to book a cheap ticket now to Germany so I can start my first leg of my journey on this wondrous ticket? If I booked to go to FRA on the same day, will I be able to check in my bags all the way through even though it will be two seperate tickets from LHR-FRA-LHR-SIN-PER? Or do I have to go pick up my bags and check in again? Sorry total newbie when it comes to working out how to depart from another country.

  Thanks.

  • Scottnothing says:

    20 Aug20 August 13:37

    The Flyertalk BA Forum has a lot of information on “B2B” (i.e. back-to-back) runs. Keep an eye on that over the coming days. Based on the last OSL-USA “viking” mistake fare, I am sure more experienced travellers will post their experiences and suggestions over the coming days about how easy it is to clear immigration and collect your bags and then re-check the same day for your flight out of Frankfurt. The main risk with a B2B run is that if your ex-London flight is delayed or cancelled your ex-FRA flight is at serious risk because the ex-London and ex-FRA flights are not on the same booking. Which is why a lot of ex-EU travellers try to arrive the night before.

    Attempting to check your bags from London to your final destination is considered unwise, because you have deliberately made two bookings to take advantage of ex-EU pricing and asking BA to check bags straight through flies in the face of that.

    I would wait until BA have confirmed to you by email that they will honour the fare before making any other position flight or hotel bookings. Good luck!

    • Redkitty says:

      20 Aug20 August 13:47

      Thanks Scottnothing, appreciate the pointers. Will check into the forum as advised.

  • Rob says:

    20 Aug20 August 15:19

    You can’t check your bags through from London to come straight back! You’d need to collect them in Frankfurt.

    However, you are counting your chickens now. Wait a week to see if BA decide to cancel the tickets or not.

• Al says:

  20 Aug20 August 13:09

  Got in on the KUL flights with new F on the 787-9. Was trying to book reward flights earlier in the week and the taxes/fees were £500 … cash only for £800 is brilliant. Not counting any chickens yet though … been here before.

  • Thomas says:

    20 Aug20 August 14:42

    I have booked FRA-SYD in F. Ticket nr had been issued, seats allocated. BA can still pull the plug? i have Munich as ticketing city, that means German law applies?

    • cheekychappie says:

      20 Aug20 August 14:44

      All answered above. BA can cancel freely if it feels like it, since this was an obvious pricing error.

    • Scottnothing says:

      20 Aug20 August 16:18

      And the terms and conditions for BA’s online fares generally contain an express provision stating that they are governed by English law. Even though the booking may have been routed via ba.com and ticketed by BA’s German offices, English law will still apply to the ticket contract. It is possible that German consumer protection legislation might apply but I doubt the Germans would have consumer rights laws that conflict with EU261.

      So you will just have to wait and see what BA decide to do about the mistake. Good luck!

• oyster says:

  20 Aug20 August 15:40

  Is it really an obvious pricing error? If, as many on here do, we believe BA F to be on a par with Qatar J and Qatar regularly have fares for £800 to Asia, then is an £800 BA fare really so disproportionately underpriced?

  It’s not as clear cut as if it had been say £400, or if the £800 was ex-UK fare that popped up.

  • cheekychappie says:

    20 Aug20 August 17:08

    Esoteric argument that wouldn’t help.

    The comparison would be with BA’s normal pricing structure, Sales included.

  • Nick says:

    20 Aug20 August 18:01

    It’s what a bookmaker would call a palpable error. Obviously it’s up to BA what they do. If they rarely sell cash fares for first and it’s normally free upgrades from CW and Avios redemptions, they might decide that the badwill caused by pulling the bookings is not worth the cost.

    I guess we just have to wait and see! If I’d booked one of these fares I’d only be making cancellable hotel bookings…

• Easterdownunder says:

  20 Aug20 August 17:51

  Aah, we’re likely to be victims of our own success here. So many of us seem to have succeeded in buying these fares (see you all in Sydney folks) that I’m feeling sure BA will act.

  Still if they need to save some money, just fire the person who pressed the wrong button, I’d rather keep my ticket, thanks

• Sunszajn says:

  20 Aug20 August 18:03

  Congrats to all and fingers crossed! Couldn’t book as i already have a long holiday planned Dec/ Jan and next Jul so my boss wouldn’t give me 2 weeks extra for Australia :). What is the best way to find out when simmilar deals pop up? (apart from waiting for Raffles to send an email), thanks

  • Rob says:

    20 Aug20 August 21:01

    Not really, they tend to come out of nowhere (usually one person randomly finding a fare and then posting something innocuous on a forum somewhere – as happened here, where someone posted on Flyertalk ‘Just found BA First to KL for £700, is this a good deal?’) and then propagate organically. Hopefully they reach me before they are pulled and I can tell you.

    That said, the Oslo US deal two weeks ago got missed because I was travelling all morning with no internet!

    • Rob says:

      21 Aug21 August 00:01

      Next time – could you just tell me ??!? 🙂

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