Update: Cathay have decided to honor the fare!
While the world usher in fireworks, celebrations and reflections on New Year Eve or New Year Day, here is what have been making waves in the Airline Industry or perhaps the mind of season travellers. Cathay Pacific New Year Present to us, for a great 2019. Business Class tickets at $675 or even better, First Class tickets at $1000 from Vietnam to most Cathay Pacific US destinations! This definitely makes 2019 a very good start of mine. While I don’t usually post about such stuff, this time around it is a little different, since I actually managed to get one of the tickets myself. Anyone else in Singapore managed to do the same? HIT ME UP! The deal was in fact too good to be true and it reeks of an error, by, yours truly, Cathay Pacific themself! Or perhaps Happy New Year from Cathay Pacific. I would just like to briefly share my thoughts on the ticket and error fares in this post. As right now, together with others, we are all anxiously awaiting the announcement of Cathay, whether they will honor the fare!
Cathay First Class, Picture from Cathay Pacific
6am GMT + 8, Singapore Time, 1/1/2019. Perhaps it is my awful body clock, I am just hitting the deck, yet the insomnia me decide to use my phone one last time. A very bad habit of mine. I am an all time favourite of One Mile At A Time, a well-known travel blog and the header “AMAZING DEAL: $675 Transpacific Cathay Pacific Business Class Tickets” caught my eye. I pulled up the flights on Google Flights, and it turn out to be true, best of all, First Class was just about a hundred more. An avid fan of luxury travelling and normally only on SQ. Random thoughts started to fire in my mind. First Class. Cathay. Lounge. Miles.
Couple hours later, I had a confirm ticket on Cathay from Da Nang, Vietnam to New York City on Cathay Pacific in First Class in May all for USD 824 or SGD 1124!
I made other routing tickets with my other miles to get to Vietnam from Singapore, since this was where I am based at. After that, all it is was a waiting game, whether Cathay should honor the fare!
I spend the later early morning awake scouring the net for more reviews and thoughts by other bloggers regarding this and kept myself excited at the fact that I might be able to finally try flying Cathay Pacific First Class. This is definitely the more impromptu air ticket that I have ever booked in my life!
Honor or Not ?
Do I think whether the fare will be honoured? Yes I think that Cathay Pacific should honor the fare! This is not only because I personally have a stake in this. Here are my arguments!
- It is a contract of service, we saw the fare on the website and we paid for it. We have a confirmation, a ticket number and a confirm seat on the relevant flights.
- Yes. It was an unbelievable deal, perhaps too good to be true. But blame that on the lucky us, we found a good deal and took advantages of it! Lucky us.
- Aircraft pricing are some complicated accounting and costing, a revenue management that perhaps even the Phd in us couldn’t decipher. In simple terms, almost everyone on the same plane as you did not pay the same price for the ticket. This is how complicated it is, an ever-changing environment. It all depends on demand and supply, when the airline release seat and promotions (or management). Thus, all in all, Cathay just made a bad pricing strategy for a day!
- Cathay Pacific had a bad year, this might be some sort of spinning into some PR Strategy and we all get to fly
There are actually rules and regulations on error fares, with the most famous being the US Department of Transport rules that if the Airline made an error, they can cancel the ticket but have to compensate passenger for any out of wallet cost that they might have spent because of the ticket. So definitely the law are on their side!
This is not only the error fare situation, but most recently I have seen and heard mistake by Hong Kong Airlines, Qatar and even my beloved Singapore Airlines. All of them have honored the fare. So I will say that it is a 50-50. Totally dependent on the company.
Error Fares or Bad Pricing Strategy? Let’s see who look at it! Of course I am hoping they honor the fare and I get to fly. But I am just keeping an open mindset and seeing the news the company release later on. They said that decision will be made on Wednesday, so I hope it will be favourable to me! I am interested to know if there are any other Singaporeans who have taken advantage of this “Sale” Share your thoughts with me!
Seeing The World In Steps 
One thought