Recently an Air France fare came up from Los Angeles or San Francisco to London in First Class for $1,500 round-trip. Normally, such a fare would begin at $6,000 and rise to $15,000. The fare was a mistake. Maybe they left off a zero. Who knows?
We spotted it. Others spotted it.
But when a fare is too good to be true, and our Spidey sense tingle, we knew the fare was illegitimate.
Others reported it. We didn’t.
One reason is because there’s no guarantee the airline will honor that fare, and that creates a big pain in the derrière for FCF readers.
In October, Virgin Australia mistakenly published a fare between the U.S. and Australia for around $174 round-trip. Nice fare, but VA didn’t honor it, and to its honor, refunded the money. However, it took a week for those who had booked the fare to find out. In that time, customers could have been carrying on their search. Very inconvenient.
So, let’s be clear: FCF doesn’t publish mistake fares, and we never will. Every fare we find for you is legitimate, a fare you can trust. (And some are just as good as mistake fares.)
As for the Air France fare, from what I hear, it appears that most of the tickets have been canceled—probably along with the job of the guy who made this mistake.