If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is, at least for United customers.
According to a Bloomberg report, the Chicago-based airline has voided the tickets issued to thousands of customers who bought them at incredibly cheap prices online. The tickets were priced cheaply due to a glitch in the pricing software. For instance, a first-class ticket from Newark, N.J., to London went for just around $75. On the United website right now, a first-class ticket for that route is going for more than $5,000.
In order to get the low rate, customers had to take a series of steps, the story notes, including saying they were in Denmark.
“United is voiding the bookings of several thousand individuals who were attempting to take advantage of an error a third-party software provider made when it applied an incorrect currency exchange rate,” Rahsaan Johnson, a spokesman, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. He noted that United filed its fares correctly.
Requests for further comment from United (UAL) by Coins2Day received no immediate response.
This isn’t the first time for this type of event, Bloomberg notes. In the past, airlines have actually allowed passengers who got cheap — or even free — flights to keep their tickets, the report said.