Whoops

[Whickerman]

Aer Lingus - a major airline - screwed up on their website, took about 300 bookings to the USA for about �350 each incl taxes, and now refuses to honour them. (Initial reports mentioned 100 passengers)

(money paid + confirmation sent = contract surely?)

The consumers rights people are up in arms, and this will probably end up in court.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008 /0417/breaking29.html?via=mr

Who gets your sympathy?

[{Dakota}]

The passengers but no doubt there will be some clause in the airline's T&C'S that will get them off the hook.

[jno]

it says 5 euros on that link, Whickerman. I think my instinct would be to sympathise with the airline but take the cheap flight

[Oneeyedvic]

Not sure is the story has changed, but as jno mentions it is Eu 5 and it affected 100 customers.

Not sure of the law in Ireland, but in the UK there is a law in place to protect companies in this instance (Argos did a similar thing a while back with cheap tvs).

I think it is only right to protect the company - think about if an employee got disgruntled, decided to leave in a couple of weeks and then reduced all their products to silly money. If the business had to honour those payments, it would be easy to bankrupt some smaller companies within a couple of weeks!

[carolegif]

a few months ago, Delta Airlines did the same thing and my son booked two return flights to NY for �150 each for himself and his partner. Delta pointed out that there had been an error and they should have been �450, but they honoured the cheaper flight and they both had a lovely 4 days.
My son is a travel consultant, so that may have been the difference, but I got the impression that Delta honoured the cheap flights for all who had booked them.

[Whickerman]

Sorry guys - meant to say - the �350 price is what they paid after taxes etc.

Also, 100 bookings affected about 300 passengers.

And good news for some - they've had to honour the flights!