Cathay Pacific mistakenly sells $16,000 tickets for $675

Cathay Pacific Airways made a mistake selling first- and business-class tickets at a steep discount and has decided to allow the lucky few who made the bookings to travel in style after all.

The Hong Kong-based airline said on its Twitter and Facebook pages on Wednesday that it would still welcome passengers that bought the business-class tickets from Vietnam to Canada and the US at economy prices earlier this week. The online ticketing error meant return fares of as low as $675 (€595) from Da Nang in Vietnam to New York at the front end of the plane, or a small fraction of its original price, which on Wednesday would have been $16,000.

“We do not want to go back on our promise to our customers,” Cathay said on its Twitter account. “We made a mistake but we look forward to welcoming you on board with your ticket issued.”

While the passengers were kept happy, the mistake adds to the embarrassments for the carrier that’s struggling to turn its fortunes around while competition intensifies from Chinese and budget airlines. The pricing gaffe comes on the heels of a sophisticated hack on Cathay’s computer systems last year that exposed private information of 9.4 million passengers in the world’s biggest airline data breach. – Bloomberg