Cathay Pacific is stepping up big time, or at least appears to be, after a ticketing system blunder yesterday saw them giving out first and business class tickets at economy prices for several hours.
Hong Kong’s flag carrier tweeted at about 4pm today that the error was a “surprise ‘special’ on New Year’s Day,” admitting that it was a mistake, but said that they looked forward to welcoming those who had purchased tickets with them.
Happy 2019 all, and to those who bought our good – VERY good surprise ‘special’ on New Year’s Day, yes – we made a mistake but we look forward to welcoming you on board with your ticket issued. Hope this will make your 2019 ‘special’ too!
.#promisemadepromisekept #lessonlearnt— Cathay Pacific (@cathaypacific) January 2, 2019
In a subsequent tweet, Cathay, responding to a question by one social media user, said that the unintentional sale was not a marketing stunt, and that they had, in fact, simply screwed up.
Dirk, Happy new year to you. I think no airline would ever want that to happen to them. We made a mistake, and it's no fault of the customer to have put their trust in us. We certainly do not want to betray that. – Toto
— Cathay Pacific (@cathaypacific) January 2, 2019
What’s not clear is just how many people were able to take advantage of the foul up before Cathay Pacific got wise and shut down the goodies pipeline.
HK01 reported that the debacle began to hit the public consciousness at about 8am yesterday, when one user posted on his Facebook page that he had managed to buy first/business class tickets from Hanoi to New York, with a transfer in Hong Kong, for just US$1,460.
According to the SCMP, return business and first class seats from Vietnam to North America were being sold at prices as low as HK$5,300 and HK$6,600 respectively (US$676 and US$841).
For those wondering how much that roundtrip ticket in either business or first class should actually cost, it’s about US$16,000 to as much as US$32,000 respetively.
The news prompted people eager to book a cheap holiday to flood Cathay’s website until about 10am yesterday, when Cathay suspended transactions for business and first class seats until about 5pm later that day when the low fares were withdrawn.
In the hours following the debacle, there was plenty of debate online as to whether or not Cathay would honor the tickets, a question we seemingly got our answer to today. But at least one Twitter user has cast a bit of doubt on the act of largesse.
In a post at 4:07pm yesterday, Twitter user Vincent Fai Lee said he’d managed to take advantage of the discount window only to have his ticket — first class per SCMP — then canceled.
We’ve reached out to get his side of the story and will update with any further information that comes to light.
