A computer glitch on Delta Air Lines caused heavy traffic and many happy fliers to purchase really cheap flights on Thursday afternoon, the Associated Press reported.
The airline's own website and other airfare booking sites were showing incorrect Delta fares from about 10 a.m. to noon ET, offering some savvy bargain hunters incredible deals.
According to the AP, a February roundtrip flight between Cincinnati and Minneapolis was being sold for just $25.05 and a roundtrip between Cincinnati and Salt Lake City for $48.41. The fares for both these trips are originally priced to be more than $400.
Although the problem has been taken care of, "Delta will honor any fares purchased at the incorrect price," Trebor Banstetter, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based airline, said.
After learning about the cheap fares from a friend's Facebook page, Jackie Fanelli tried to buy a $98 roundtrip first-class ticket from her home city of Baltimore to Honolulu on Priceline.com. The transaction, however, wasn't accepted before the deal was shut down.
"It was too good to be true," Fanelli said. "I try to go away every other year and this was not the year."
The increased traffic on Thursday afternoon started giving persistent problems to Delta's website, the AP reported.
"It looks like Delta's programmers had a little too much eggnog yesterday," joked George Hobica, founder of AirfareWatchDog.com, which promotes airfare sales.
A junior programmer must have made a mistake while tweaking the fares with a $10 or $20 system-wide change, Hobica said.
"People just go wild. People have been bragging about booking six first-class tickets to Hawaii," Hobica said. "People hate the airlines so much that when this happens, they say: I'm going to get back at you for the time you broke my suitcase and didn't pay for it."
United Airlines experienced a similar mistake in September. Their customers were able to purchase tickets for $5 or $10 due to an error in filing fares in the computer systems, the AP reported. Aimed at truth in advertising, the New Department of Transportation regulations require airlines to honor any mistake fares offered.
