Travel Blog

What Are Airline Mistake Fares? The Ultimate Travel Hack

The holy grail of travel hacks is airline mistake fares, or error fare. These are price glitches or mistakes not meant to be published for purchase.

What Exactly is an Mistake Fare?

At its core, an airline mistake fare is exactly what it sounds like: an error in the pricing algorithms or human entry that lists airfare at a significantly lower cost than intended. This can be due to several factors, such as currency conversion mistakes, technical glitches, or simply a typo. Whatever the cause, the result is a price tag that looks too good to be true.

Airline Mistake Fare Examples:

airline mistake fare or error fare to china — 1st Class/Business Class Mistake Fare To Beijing China

Mistake Fare - Paris to New York Round Trip For $8

✈️ Not A Member?

Airline Mistake Fare Alerts - Save Up To 95% On flights!

View Recent Examples

Mistake Fares Have Many Names

Airline mistake fares are known by several other terms, each mostly meaning the same thing depending on who you ask, the bottom line is that the price is a mistake regardless of how it happened.

Error Fare: This term is widely used and directly points to the accidental nature of the fare.
Glitch Fare: Highlights the technical or system-related errors that lead to these unusually low prices.
Fat Finger Fare: Refers to the idea that the fare was caused by a typing mistake, such as a misplaced decimal point or incorrect digit.
Mistake Rate: Another straightforward term indicating an unintentional pricing error.
Fare Glitch: Similar to "glitch fare," emphasizing the error or hiccup in the pricing system.
Mispriced Fare: A general term indicating that the fare does not match the intended price.
Pricing Error: Broadly describes any kind of mistake in the pricing process.

At Jetsetter Alerts, when we send them to our members we keep it simple and just call them "Mistake Fares", because our members could care less about the reason for the mistake.

How Do These Price Mistake Fares Happen?

Human Error: A simple keystroke error—a misplaced comma or decimal—can reduce a $1500 ticket to $150 in an instant.
Currency Conversion: Fluctuations in currency values or errors in setting exchange rates can lead to unexpected bargains.
System Glitches: Airlines use complex automated systems to manage their pricing. Sometimes, these systems malfunction, leading to unexpected prices popping up.

How To Find These Elusive Price Glitches?

Catching a mistake fare requires nothing more than luck if you're not an expert or using the help of technology to assist you. For the average person the best way to find mistake fares are to:

Sign Up for Alerts: Services like our cheap fight alerts at Jetsetter Alerts provide any cheap flight deals we find for our members, which also includes mistake fares.
Follow Travel Hackers: Some travel bloggers and websites specialize in finding and sharing these deals. Keeping tabs on their posts can be highly beneficial.

Will Airlines Honor These Errors?

In the past, regulations required airlines to honor mistake fares, but this has changed in many regions. Today, it depends largely on the airline's policy and the specific circumstances of the error.

Historically, most airlines honor the fares as a gesture of goodwill or to avoid negative publicity, and simply because they don't have the ability to have customer service chasing down customers over an error on a price when they need to be doing their normal job or risk getting backlogged which would cost them more than the mistake on the price of the flight you booked.

We have personally never seen a regular economy class fare not be honored, but we have heard and seen of some first class and business class international flights not honored. That said, still 90% of those are still honored as well.

Here is an article talking about United Honoring Flights that were basically free.

If the airline chooses not not to honor the fare, you will be given the option to purchase the ticket at the intended price or get refunded in full. However, there is no risk in showing up for your flight and there being an issue—they will always let you know within 1-2 days of booking if there is any issue.

How Does Jetsetter Alerts Find Mistake Fares?

Because we have members that depart from from every airport in the nation, and our computers are scanning 24/7 looking for abnormally low prices on flights, and that's what triggers an alert. So, it's not that we are super human but rather our computers scraping their websites are.

Without a computer doing it, it's honestly just luck and the odds intentionally being able to find a mistake fare is extremely low.

The only types of mistake fares that you can have a higher probability of finding would be fuel dump price glitches, which is more or less intentional manipulation on the person booking, rather than the airline making a mistake.

The other would be manipulating currency conversions, and where you are from that can cause the prices to change dramatically as well. Most are unaware but airlines charge people of different nations entirely different prices on their flights.

Here's an example of a price glitch caused by currency munipulation:

In the two photos below you will see it's for the same flights, on the same dates, being referred from Skyscanner.com to Expedia. The only thing that was changed, was the country that we told Skycanner we were from.

This was for 3 Business class lay flat tickets from Copenhagen to Kenya, and look at the massive price difference.

This first photo was if we were from Sweden:

Same 3 Round Trip Business Class Flights for $1,871 Total

This photo is as if we were from the United States:

Mistake Fare -business class to Africa — 3 Round Trip Business Class Flights to Kenya For $28,760 Total

Pretty crazy right? Believe it or not, the 28K is what those flights actually cost. But when I told the system more or less that I wanted to know the price in US dollars, but pay in Swedish currency and there was a massive mistake in the calculation of the currency conversion.

On Skyscanner if you click the world icon up at the top right, this is what you will see.

No other website that we're aware of will actually allow you to change this information. But since Skyscanner partners with pretty much every travel website and airline, you can change these settings on their site and then get referred to the website in question with these settings still active.

It is also true that airlines will strait up charge different amounts based on where you are from, as they want to get the sale and want to get as much as they possibly think you will be willing to pay. This is an easy way to save $50-$300 on an international flight with enough tinkering with it. This is not a mistake but rather just greed here, whereas the first example above is a mistake.

What not to do if you book a mistake fare

Never Contact The Airline to ask "Are you going to honor this price I booked". You're just admitting you know what you paid is not accurate, and a sure way to get your ticket canceled if the agent wants to be a jerk about it. And if the mistake has not yet been corrected, you will ruin it for anyone else who hasn't booked. However, mistakes normally last only minutes, hours to 1 day max.

So just relax, grin and know the the vast majority are honored.

Do Mistake Fares Happen with All Airlines or Only Certain Ones?

Mistake fares can occur with any airline, or on any OTA (Online Travel Agency, think Expedia, Orbitz etc.

No airline or website is immune to human error, system glitches, or currency conversion mistakes that can lead to these pricing anomalies. However, if this was an OTA mistake you will only want to book with the biggest like Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline etc. Because the tiny budget websites are definitely not going to honor the flight if the airline does not, whereas you have a higher probability of the larger companies just eating it since it was their mistake.

Are Mistake Fares More Common on International or Domestic Flights?

Mistake fares are more common on domestic flights, primarily because there are far more domestic flights than international ones. However, these errors often go unnoticed because domestic flights are typically less expensive to begin with, and therefore go unnoticed unless it's drastic.

This flights from New York To LAX in the photo below is obvious, but say it was $89 instead of $25 and one might just think it's the most amazing deal ever when the truth is those fares were probably meant to go for close to $200, but the airline isn't going to even blink an eye at that mistake, and the traveler know no different.

On the other hand, mistake fares on international flights are very noticeable most of the time.

Sign up for Jetsetter Alerts below, and get all of our alerts sent to your email, personalized based on your departure area.

Related Post