A few years ago, Norwegian briefly sold one-way flights from London to Los Angeles for £39. Not a typo. Thirty-nine pounds. People who spotted it in time flew transatlantic for less than a tank of petrol.
That is an error fare. And if you have never heard of them, or you have heard of them but never known how to act on one, this guide is for you.
Error fares happen more regularly than most people realise. They are not sales, they are not promotions, and the airlines definitely do not want you booking them. But when they appear, they are completely legitimate to buy, and they represent some of the best value you will ever find on a flight. We are talking business class to New York for £200. Long-haul return trips for less than a budget hotel. Routes that would normally cost £900 appearing at £90.
Here is everything you need to know.
An error fare is exactly what the name suggests: a flight sold at the wrong price because someone, or something, made a mistake. The airline did not intend to offer that price. It appeared because of a slip, a glitch, or a system fault, and sharp-eyed travellers spotted it before the airline could fix it.
The price gaps can be staggering. A transatlantic fare that should cost £800 appearing at £80. First class to Dubai for the price of an economy seat. Business class round trips to Asia for a few hundred pounds. These are not exaggerations, they are documented examples that have happened in recent years.
One thing worth knowing: in our copy, we use “error fare” for flights. For hotels and accommodation, the equivalent is called a mistake rate. You will also see the terms “mistake fare” and “pricing mistake” used elsewhere, and they mean the same thing. We keep it consistent so you always know what kind of deal we are talking about.
Airlines manage some of the most complicated pricing systems in any industry. Thousands of routes, dozens of fare classes, multiple currencies, multiple booking platforms, all updating in near real-time. It is genuinely impressive that errors do not happen more often. But they do happen, and they usually come from one of four places.
Someone typed the wrong number. The most common cause by some distance. An airline employee manually enters a fare into the booking system and makes a mistake. A misplaced decimal point. A digit too many or too few. These get called “fat finger” errors in the trade, and because fares feed instantly across every platform that connects to the global distribution system, the wrong price can appear on hundreds of booking sites within seconds.
A currency conversion went wrong. Airlines publish fares in local currencies across many markets. When the conversion goes wrong, a reasonable fare in one currency can look absurdly cheap in another. These errors often affect bookings from specific countries before anyone realises what has happened.
A tax or surcharge got left out. The price you see for a flight includes the base fare, plus taxes, airport charges, and fuel surcharges. If the fuel surcharge fails to attach, or a tax field is accidentally set to zero, the published price drops dramatically. The passenger sees a complete-looking price. The missing component just was not included.
A third-party platform had a glitch. Online booking sites pull fares from airline systems, and occasionally something goes wrong in that process. A caching error or a synchronisation fault can cause a fare to display incorrectly on one platform even when the airline’s own website shows the right price. You might hear these called “glitch fares” rather than true error fares, but for the person booking, the opportunity is identical.
Honestly? In the UK, no. There is no law that compels an airline to honour a pricing mistake.
Under UK contract law, a binding agreement generally needs an offer, acceptance, and payment. Airlines typically write their terms to say that the contract is not concluded until they issue the e-ticket. Before that point, most airlines reserve the right to cancel a booking made at an incorrect price. British Airways has done this, cancelling bookings it described as “manifestly incorrectly priced” and refunding passengers in full. The UK Civil Aviation Authority oversees consumer law in aviation but does not have a specific power to force airlines to honour pricing errors.
Some countries give passengers stronger protection. The US, for a period, had rules that effectively required airlines to honour published fares regardless of error. The UK does not have an equivalent.
So why do most people who book error fares end up flying?
Because around 70% of error fares are honoured anyway. Not because the airline has to, but because the alternative is worse. Cancelling thousands of bookings generates terrible press. It creates a flood of customer service calls. And it penalises passengers who did absolutely nothing wrong. Most airlines crunch those numbers and decide that absorbing the cost of the mistake is cheaper than the fallout from cancelling.
What makes a fare more likely to be honoured?
A plausible price helps. A £120 fare to New York is unusual but not impossible. A £10 fare to Sydney is obviously wrong to any reasonable person, and airlines are more likely to cancel those. Courts have previously looked at whether a fare was “manifestly incorrect,” and an extreme price is easier for the airline to defend as a clear error.
Once your e-ticket arrives, your booking is on much firmer ground. The e-ticket signals that the airline has processed and confirmed the transaction. Cancellations happen much less often at that stage.
Booking directly with the airline, rather than through a third-party site, also improves your odds. There are documented cases where an airline honoured direct bookings while asking OTAs to cancel the same fare. Book direct when you can.
The one rule that matters most. Do not commit non-refundable money to anything else until your e-ticket arrives. No non-refundable hotel. No connecting train you cannot change. If the fare is cancelled, you get a full refund on the ticket itself, no questions. But the airline will not cover other costs you have locked in around it. Book flexible accommodation if you want to get ahead, and hold off on everything else until that e-ticket lands in your inbox.
Error fares disappear fast. Most last a few hours. Some are gone in 30 minutes. The people who book them are already watching, and they move without hesitation. Here is how to be one of those people.
Sign up for Flight Tribe deal alerts. We flag error fares the moment we spot them. Our email gets them to you before they are corrected, alongside every other deal we track.
Follow the specialist sources. As well as us, Jack’s Flight Club is the best-known error fare tracker in the UK and has a strong record of finding genuine pricing mistakes before they are fixed. Secret Flying covers error fares and mistake rates worldwide. Both are worth having in your feed.
Use Google Flights’ price calendar. Switch to the date grid view, which shows prices across a full month at a glance. If one date on a route is dramatically cheaper than every surrounding date, with no obvious reason (no shoulder season, no visible airline promotion), it can signal a pricing anomaly. Always cross-check that date on the airline’s own website before booking anywhere else.
Set fare alerts on Skyscanner and Google Flights. Neither of these specifically hunts error fares, but a sharp price drop on a route you care about will trigger an alert. It is not active hunting, but it means you will not miss something right in front of you.
Check more than one departure airport. Some error fares appear only from certain departure points, because the mistake affects a specific regional fare filing or currency conversion. The same error fare that is visible from Manchester might not show up from London, or vice versa. If you have any flexibility on where you fly from, it takes 30 seconds to check.
Move immediately when you find one. There is genuinely no benefit in waiting. Error fares do not improve. Every hour the fare is live, more people are booking it, and the airline is more likely to notice and pull it. If the dates work and the price is remarkable, book it.
One thing not to do: do not call the airline to ask whether the fare is correct. It sounds like common sense, but alerting them speeds up the fix. Book, keep your confirmation, and wait.
Finding an error fare is one thing. Booking it in a way that protects you if something goes wrong is another. These steps take about two minutes and make a real difference.
Book directly with the airline where you can. As above, direct bookings have a better track record of being honoured. If the fare appears on the airline’s own site, use it.
Pay with a credit card. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act gives you joint protection from your credit card company on purchases over £100 made directly with the provider. If the booking is cancelled and a refund is not forthcoming, your card company is legally on the hook alongside the airline. Under £100, or paying by debit card, and you lose Section 75 protection, though your bank may still offer chargeback as a route. Pay by credit card if you can.
Note that buying through a third-party platform can complicate a Section 75 claim, because the direct link between you and the airline is broken. Another reason to book direct.
Screenshot everything. Capture the fare before you book, the booking summary, and the confirmation page. If there is any dispute later about what price you saw and what you paid, you want clear evidence.
Watch for your e-ticket. It should arrive by email within 24 hours of booking. If it has not, check your spam folder, then log into your account. If it is still missing after 24 hours, contact the airline. A booking that has not generated an e-ticket is more likely to be in trouble than one that has.
Keep everything non-refundable well away from this booking for now. The risk to you financially is minimal if you do this. The flight refunds automatically if cancelled. The danger is everything else you might book around it.
It happens to around 30% of error fare bookings. When it does, here is what to expect.
You get your money back in full. The airline returns the ticket price to your original payment method. They cannot charge you a higher price without your permission, and they cannot keep your money and not provide a ticket. If a refund does not appear within 7 to 14 days, chase the airline directly.
They are not obliged to rebook you at the error price. Some airlines offer a goodwill discount or a partial credit on a new booking. Some offer nothing beyond the refund. You cannot force their hand on the fare itself, in most cases.
If the refund is slow or disputed, and you paid by credit card for a purchase over £100, raise a Section 75 claim with your card provider. For amounts under £100 or debit card payments, ask your bank about chargeback. In practice, airlines refund without a fight. Section 75 is a backstop for genuinely awkward situations.
If you lost money on other costs you booked in reliance on the fare, talk to Citizens Advice or a consumer solicitor. This is unusual, but if the cancellation came late and your losses are significant, you may have a claim. Do not ignore it.
If the airline is not engaging, CEDR and AviationADR are both CAA-approved dispute resolution services for aviation passengers. Raising a formal complaint through either is free and often faster than pursuing the airline directly.
These are all verified cases drawn from press coverage and documented sources.
Norwegian, London to Los Angeles, approximately £39 one-way (2023) Norwegian briefly sold one-way tickets from London to Los Angeles at around £39. The standard price on this route typically starts from £400 upwards. The fare was spotted widely and shared quickly. Bookings made during the window were reportedly honoured.
British Airways, first class to Dubai at economy prices (2023) A fare class filing error saw British Airways publish first class fares to Dubai at what amounted to economy prices. Standard first class fares on this route run to several thousand pounds. The airline honoured the bookings.
Singapore Airlines, business class at up to 80% off (2024) A system error led Singapore Airlines to publish business class fares to multiple cities at heavily discounted prices. The airline honoured them across a range of affected bookings. Singapore Airlines has a track record of honouring rather than cancelling, which makes errors on their flights worth acting on quickly.
ANA (All Nippon Airways), round-trip first and business class from approximately £300 (2023) ANA briefly sold first and business class round-trip fares from Europe for around £300, against a typical first class price of £10,000 or more. The fare went viral. In this case, ANA cancelled the bookings and issued refunds, even where e-tickets had been issued. It is the most prominent recent example of a very extreme fare being pulled, and a useful reminder that an implausibly cheap price carries more risk than a merely very cheap one.
Delta, US domestic routes from approximately £48 return A human entry error saw Delta publish domestic US round trips at prices starting around £48, against standard fares of over £400. A Delta spokesman confirmed the mistake but said the airline had decided to honour tickets booked at the incorrect price.
The pattern across these examples is worth noting. Airlines with strong customer relationships tend to honour. Extreme fares, particularly on premium carriers with very high standard prices, carry more cancellation risk. A business class fare at 50% off normal prices is a very different proposition to a first class fare at 3% of normal prices.
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What is the difference between an error fare and a sale? A sale is something the airline chose to do. They deliberately cut prices, they set a booking window, and they usually shout about it. An error fare is something the airline did not mean to do, and they will fix it as soon as they find out. Sales are predictable and repeatable. Error fares are rare, urgent, and gone in hours.
How long do error fares stay up? Most disappear within a few hours of appearing. Some last overnight if the mistake happens outside business hours. There is no way to know when any specific fare will be corrected, which is why speed matters so much. Assume you have very little time from the moment you see one.
Can budget airlines have error fares too? Absolutely. Error fares appear across every type of airline. Budget carriers are just as susceptible to human pricing errors, currency conversion glitches, and platform faults as any full-service airline. Some of the best error fares of recent years have come from low-cost carriers.
Should I get travel insurance for an error fare trip? You should have travel insurance for any trip, error fare or not. For the error fare itself specifically, the main financial risk is that the booking gets cancelled, and you get a full refund in that case. The bigger insurance question is about everything else you book around the trip. If you keep those costs flexible while you wait for the e-ticket, your exposure is very low.
Is it actually OK to book an error fare? Yes, completely. You are buying a ticket at a price the airline published. You are not exploiting anyone, and you are not doing anything underhand. Airlines are large commercial operations and they know error fares happen. The ones that routinely honour them have made a deliberate business decision to do so. Book it, keep your confirmation, wait for the e-ticket.
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