A man bought a $250,000 plane ticket for just $17,000 after Japanese airline All Nippon Airways listed the fare incorrectly due to a currency conversion error, according to a report. Bloomberg.
Bloomberg reported that a man named Herman Yip said he bought 25 tickets at a large discount after the popular Japanese airline listed incorrect fares on a Vietnamese website. The 32-year-old, who runs a travel website from Hong Kong, said he even bought a first-class round-trip flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Aruba, via Tokyo and New York, for just 890 USD – a discount of almost 95 USD. percent of the original fare.
On Wednesday, April 19, All Nippon Airways (ANA) said airfares were listed incorrectly on its Vietnamese website due to a currency conversion problem. An airline spokesman said: Bloomberg that it is “investigating the cause of the error and the extent of its damage,” but it remains unclear how many people have received discounted tickets.
ANA has yet to make a final decision on whether it will honor low-cost airfares, but the discounted tickets will remain in effect for those flying before their decision is made.
“I guess ANA hasn’t made it clear yet whether they will pay tickets, because the impact from the incident seems to be huge when the error lasts so long,” Yip said, adding that low fares are still on the site. ANA website for at least 12 hours. “I know 20 people who knew about the incident and that of course only multiplies the impact.”
In addition to a first-class flight from Indonesia to the Caribbean, Mr. Yip also won plane tickets for family and friends. “I didn’t even bother to ask them if they could come, because I needed to book very quickly,” he said.
Mr. Yip also discovered that he could change flights for free once the order was confirmed, so he updated his first-class trip to start in Bangkok, Thailand instead of Jakarta, because it’s closer to his home in Hong Kong.
Many of the tickets affected by the reported currency conversion error were business class flights between North America and Asia, typically ranging from $8,000 to $10,000, but costing only $300 at the time of the incident. problem. Another person working in the aviation industry said Bloomberg that he booked a round trip business class ticket from Jakarta to Honolulu via Tokyo for 13 million VND, or about 550 USD. Once the bug was fixed, the flight reverted to its regular fare of $8,200.
All Nippon Airways – founded in 1952 – has grown to become the largest airline in Japan, receiving five-star rating every year for the past 10 years. It is ranked third among the world’s top 100 airlines for 2021, according to Skytraxand in 2019 the airline was honored as the cleanest airline in the world.
Japan Airlines isn’t the only airline that mistakenly sells airline tickets at significantly low prices. In 2019, Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific Airways accidentally sold first and business class tickets from Vietnam to the United States for 675 USD, a regular flight costs up to 16,000 USD.
independence Contacted All Nippon Airways for comment.
