United Airlines said passengers who bought tickets that were accidentally sold for free because of faulty reservations data will be able to use them for travel.
“United has reviewed the error that occurred yesterday and decided that, based on these specific circumstances, we will honor the tickets,” Mary Clark, a spokeswoman for the unit of Chicago-based United Continental Holdings Inc., said Friday in an e-mail. The firm isn’t disclosing how many of the tickets were sold.
The $0 fares were only on the United.com Web site for “a couple hours” at midday Thursday, and weren’t distributed via channels such as travel agencies, Megan McCarthy, another spokeswoman, said yesterday. United’s Shares reservation system didn’t cause the fault, McCarthy said.
The carrier had to close the booking engine on its United.com Web site “so we could correct the error,” McCarthy said. The Web site was back to normal at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday, she said.
Many of the tickets cost $5 or $10 in total, suggesting United was only collecting a mandatory 9/11 security fee of $2.50 per leg, said Rick Seaney, chief executive officer of FareCompare.com, a ticket research firm based in Dallas. Taxes and fees typically add up to $22 or more a ticket, he said.
Robert Stokas, an attorney, said he was on United’s Web site when the erroneous data was loaded and bought six tickets Thursday for a trip to Los Angeles next June for $60 total.
“I assumed it was a promotion or something,” said Stokas, 35. “They took the high road, said, ‘We made a mistake,’ ” he said. “It may cost them some money on the front end, but it saves them potential litigation and bad press.”
The latest incident was at least the fourth public computer disruption at United since March 2012, when the carrier switched its former Apollo reservation system over to Shares, the program used by merger partner Continental Airlines.
In the reservation shift, United struggled with long lines at check-in counters and a surge in call volumes while making the transition.
Automated check-in access was lost at airport kiosks and on United’s Web site in August 2012, and a software breakdown in the carrier’s flight dispatching system delayed hundreds of flights in November.