I’m not a fan of travel hacks…haven’t been since Janet and I started our business. They’re a lot like drinking cheap wine…you might save a little money, but you end up with a nasty headache. I’ve written about travel hacks before…they don’t work and they don’t last, yet new ones keep popping up and people keep falling for them. Here’s the latest, and why I don’t buy into it.
This hack seeks to take advantage of what has become known as accidental air fares. It relies on the premise that airline ticketing has become so dynamic and complicated, erroneously low fares are bound to slip through the cracks. They end up as cheap published fares offered not by some fly by night discounter, but directly from the airlines...for pennies on the dollar and available for anyone lucky enough to find them. The hack part of it involves subscription services that, in exchange for a fee, send out an alert whenever accidental fares are published. If you act quickly, you can snag a cheap plane ticket. At least, that’s the promise.
Accidental fares are actually a thing. Examples include a British Airways accidental fare that offered economy class seats for 1£ (a little over $1) when the prevailing rate was close to 200£ ($265). Another example occurred just last week, when Qantas published first-class tickets on flights between the U.S. and Australia for $3K in Aussie dollars (about $2036) , 85% less than the going rate of $20K in Aussie dollars ($13,575). Several hundred travelers took advantage of that one before Qantas discovered their error and corrected it.
Accidental fares aren't new, nor is the hack that seeks to take advantage of them. I first encountered it several years ago after reading about a service that promised to alert subscribers anytime accidental fares were published. The service claimed if subscribers acted quickly, they could purchase plane tickets at a fraction of the going fare, taking advantage of the airlines’ mistakes before they corrected them. And since the ticket you purchased at the accidental fare was based on a published price, the airline was obligated to honor it no matter how low the price.
Whether it be a byproduct of complicated revenue management software or currency conversion errors, accidental fares happen. But can you take advantage of them? Well…maybe. First off, they don’t happen very often, in spite of what the hacksters lead you to believe. And though at one time FAA regulations required airlines to honor all published ticket prices, they no longer do. The FAA updated airline pricing regulations in 2015 and one of the updates allowed airlines to cancel any tickets purchased when a low fare was published in error.
When I first encountered this hack and learned about the subscription service for accidental fare alerts, I signed up for it. I don’t remember what the service cost, but they offered a two-week free trial which I took advantage of. A bold claim requires proof, and I wanted to check this one out.
As soon as I signed up for the free trial, I began getting the promised alerts for accidental fares, usually several per day. I was reminded in each accidental fare alert that to take full advantage of the accidental fare phenomenon, I had to pay for their premium subscription. Strike one. None of the accidental fare alerts I received involved airlines and flight routes that met my travel needs. Strike two. After watching the alerts for a few days, I decided to see what would happen if I tried to purchase a ticket for the accidental fare. I had no intention of going through with the purchase…I just wanted to see how far into the process the airline’s system would allow me to get. I never made it to first base. By the time I got to the airline’s website to purchase the ticket, within minutes of getting the alert, the accidental fare was gone. If it ever even existed…I had no way of knowing. Strike three…do not pass go, do not collect a cheap plane ticket.
Needless to say, I let my trial period lapse without buying into the service. At that point, since I doubted the veracity of the accidental fare claim, I did some homework. I found stories in reliable travel media outlets about consumers who were able to take advantage of accidental fares, but I also learned that accidental fares aren’t as common as the hacksters would have you believe. And most often the travelers who took advantage of accidental fares weren’t pursuing the hack in response to an alert…they were just trying to buy a plane ticket and happened to land on the airline’s website at the right time.
After the 2015 FAA rule change governing air fares, airlines began taking steps to shut down the accidental fare hack. Most added wording to their terms and conditions stating if there is an error or mistake that is reasonably obvious in the fare price, the airline is entitled to cancel the booking and offer a full refund of the price paid. And of course, it is up to the airline to decide what fare mistakes are reasonably obvious. At that point the passenger is left to rebook the flight at the prevailing rate, which may be higher than if it were purchased at the prevailing rate in the first place.
The lure of the accidental fare hack is that airlines will continue to honor tickets once sold, regardless of the magnitude of their error and despite their updated terms and conditions. The logic behind it is that airlines would rather suffer the small loss in ticketing revenue that results from honoring accidental fares than deal with the bad press that would result if they didn’t.
Accidental fare alert services have proliferated since the one I took for a test drive several years ago, and there have been a number of recent articles sharing the accidental fare hack. Those articles claim airlines continue to honor up to 90% of the accidental fares they publish. I don’t believe that.
The only thing airlines get for honoring accidental fares is lost revenue, and I found several articles about airlines cancelling accidental fare ticket purchases. Travelers who purchased tickets on that British Airways flight offered for a little over $1 had their tickets canceled. Same with the Qantas first-class tickets purchased at an unintended 85% discount. British Airways offered nothing by way of compensation for their error…passengers had to rebook at the prevailing rate. Qantas did offer affected passengers the choice of having their tickets cancelled or downgrading their ticket to business class at the accidental fare rate. I think that is more reflective of their significantly higher prices as compared with other airlines than it is any industry wide trend to offer compensation for cancelled accidental fare tickets.
By the time a travel hack gets published by a major media outlet, it is long gone. And even if it were still true some of the time, 90% of a small number is an even smaller number. As knowledge and acceptance of the existence of accidental fares has spread, rare though they may be, the fear of bad press on the part of the airlines has dimished, as has the practice of airlines honoring accidental fare ticket purchases.
If you find a flight with an accidental fare and are tempted to purchase it, there are risks. I found stories of airlines cancelling tickets purchased at an accidental fare several months after the purchase, and just a few weeks prior to the scheduled departure. Having to repurchase a plane ticket close to your departure date usually means paying more for it.
As with most travel hacks, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Accidental fares aren’t going away, but they are becoming less frequent. Airlines have gotten better at identifying and correcting erroneous fares before they get published, and when they don’t they are simply refusing to honor the accidental fare. Because they can.
So…if you do manage to score a plane ticket at an accidental fare you are increasingly likely to have your cheap ticket cancelled out. And you may end up paying more for the ticket in the end. The cheap wine headache effect.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
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