ANA Cancels Indonesia-to-USA Business Class Error Fare Bookings

Last week, All Nippon Airways (ANA) sold business class tickets between Indonesia and the US for such a low price, we decided to inform all newsletter subscribers immediately about the spectacular deal. In just one example of many, people were able to purchase a Jakarta-to-New York roundtrip in ANA’s highly regarded business class for as little as $320.

Since then, there have been a lot of rumors if the airline would honor the sold tickets or not. Some people called ANA’s hotline, getting contradictory answers depending on who answered the call.

On this Tuesday, ANA finally made an official statement, which is a letdown for our readers and ourselves (yup, we are booking these fares, too):

Information for Affected Customers

For the flights which were erroneously processed, ANA will cancel and fully refund all itineraries. ANA will notify each customer affected by the error. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your cooperation in communicating with us.

ANA.co.jp

The reason for the low prices was faulty currency conversion by international booking software Amadeus.

ANA does not mention what happens to tickets on which one or multiple segments have already been used. There is also no info on what happens to tickets scheduled to start in the upcoming days. This is a matter of urgency – imagine travelling to far-away Indonesia just to find out all consecutive parts of your journey have been voided.

Bottom Line

This development is sad, but not surprising. ANA has sold thousands of tickets during this error, probably even tens of thousands. Some people even publicly bragged about purchasing 20 tickets or more. While ANA has honored other Error Fares in the past, the financial damage was seemingly too high in this case.

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Comments (4)

  1. Rob says:

    Iโ€™m fine with that to be honest. If itโ€™s part of their terms and conditions and theyโ€™re legally entitled to do so, then everybody that booked these fares knew that this was a strong possibility.

    Urgent fares (not started yet or active already) is a different story. Itโ€™s still the fault of the user in my opinion, but it would be nice if they were honored.

  2. Jiri says:

    Has anyone have any idea how long the refund would take? My tickets still saying โ€œTicketedโ€. Thank you!

  3. Michael says:

    Airlines should not be allowed to cancel and refund error fares. Once the offer has reached the beneficiary and it was accepted, the contract should be sealed.

  4. Stefan says:

    has anyone noticed that error fares are much, much less common in post-pandemic era? Maybe is just me, but I remember having an error fare once a week or even more frequently. After the flights resumed, this is perhaps the second example I can think of.

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