Anger after BA cancels tickets sold too cheaply

BRITISH Airways has cancelled thousands of tickets after they were accidentally sold off too cheaply.

Holidaymakers rushed to snap up cutprice flights to Tel Aviv and dubai which were sold via travel agents last week.

Return tickets which can cost up to £1,000 were being offered at between £167 and £300. But they have since been cancelled by the airline.

BA blamed the fiasco on an ‘exceptionally rare’ human error and has offered those affected a £100 voucher as well as a refund.

However, furious passengers urged it to honour the tickets they bought in good faith. In the worst cases passengers are now having to cancel their holidays as they cannot afford the ‘real’ fare.

The boss of one travel agent said more than 2,000 of his customers have been hit by the error and that five other agencies sold tickets at the wrong price. Travel Up chief Ali Shah said: ‘It’s very cruel for the customers because they have booked these flights in good faith and expected it to be honoured.’ Although the tickets were cheap, passengers said they were not cheap enough to presume they had been offered in error.

Guy Anker, of MoneySavingexpert.com, which broke the story, said: ‘BA must do the decent thing and honour these fares, it’s as simple as that.

‘Anything less would be bang out of order and would leave honest passengers out of pocket. People paid in good faith at a believable price – it’s not as though the tickets cost £5, which would clearly have been a glitch.’

Ash dubbay from london said he had booked a return flight to Tel Aviv for £195 but now has to pay around £ 1,000. He said although the tickets were cheap they were not ‘far fetched’ and comparable with other airlines. He said: ‘I’m very disappointed.’

esther Vadia had booked six tickets to Tel Aviv for £167 each. Although she will be refunded she said she will lose more than £1,000 in accommodation she has booked in Israel. She will also have to pay credit card fees for the cancelled tickets.

She said: ‘If you go to the supermarket and buy something cheap, they cannot come after you later and say you have to give it back. So how can an airline do that? Besides, I don’t think the tickets were so cheap as to be unbelievable.’

The row is the latest setback for BA which has suffered a series of knocks to its renowned reputation for customer service.

Its standing was badly hit by an IT shutdown last summer which grounded flights and resulted in tens of thousands of passengers being stranded across the world.

BA has not revealed how many people have been affected. It insisted the fare was only available to a small number of agents over a short period of time.

A spokesman added: ‘We have apologised to customers and offered a gesture of goodwill. errors like this are exceptionally rare, and if they do occur, under contract law, there is no binding contract between the parties.’