Error fares UK: the complete guide to flight pricing mistakes

Published 16 May 2026 | Updated 4 October 2026 by Jane Robinson

Error fares are flights sold at the wrong price, and UK travellers who spot one in time can fly for a fraction of the normal fare. They rarely last more than a few hours, and the airline may still cancel. This guide explains how error fares happen, where you stand if the airline backs out, how to find them, and how to book one without putting money you can’t get back at risk.

Error fares aren’t sales or promotions, and the airline doesn’t want you to book them. When one appears, though, you can buy it like any other fare, and the saving can be huge.

Table of contents

• What is an error fare?
• How do error fares happen?
• Do airlines have to honour them?
• How to find error fares
• How to book one safely
• What to do if the airline cancels
• Error fares we are tracking right now
• Your questions answered

What is an error fare?

An error fare is a flight sold at the wrong price because someone, or something, made a mistake. The airline never meant 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 fixed it. Think of a long-haul fare that should cost several hundred pounds showing at a tenth of that. You’ll also see the terms mistake fare and pricing mistake, which mean the same thing. For hotels, the equivalent is a mistake rate.

How do error fares happen?

Airlines run some of the most complicated pricing systems in any industry: thousands of routes, dozens of fare classes, several currencies and many booking sites, all updating constantly. Mistakes usually come from one of four places.

• A typing mistake. Someone enters a fare by hand and misplaces a decimal point or drops a digit. These are known as fat finger errors, and because fares feed out to every connected booking site, the wrong price can spread within minutes.
• A currency conversion error. Airlines publish fares in many currencies. When a conversion goes wrong, a sensible fare in one currency can look absurdly cheap in another, often only for bookings from one country.
• A missing tax or surcharge. The price you see includes the base fare plus taxes, airport charges and surcharges. If one of those fails to attach, the total drops sharply but still looks complete.
• A booking site glitch. Online travel agents pull fares from airline systems, and a caching or sync fault can show the wrong price on one site while the airline’s own website is correct. These are sometimes called glitch fares.

Error fares can show up on any route, at any time, which is why the people who catch them are watching constantly rather than checking once a week.

Do airlines have to honour error fares?

Not necessarily. Many airlines write their terms so that the contract only exists once they accept your booking. Jet2’s terms are a clear example: the flights on its website are an invitation for you to make an offer, and a binding contract only exists when Jet2 emails to confirm it has accepted. Even so, some airlines choose to honour error fares, because cancelling large numbers of bookings brings bad press and a flood of complaints. The UK Civil Aviation Authority is the regulator to know if a dispute follows.

The rule that matters most: don’t commit non-refundable money to anything else until the airline confirms your booking and your e-ticket arrives. No non-refundable hotel. No train you can’t change. If the airline cancels the fare, you should get the ticket price back, but it won’t cover other costs you 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.

How to find error fares UK travellers can book

Error fares disappear fast. Most last a few hours, and some are gone much sooner. The most reliable approach is to have alerts set up before a fare appears, then act quickly when one lands.

• Sign up for Flight Tribe deal alerts. We flag error fares as soon as we spot them, alongside every other deal we track.
• Use the Google Flights date grid. It shows prices across a month at a glance. If one date on a route is far cheaper than every date around it, with no obvious reason, it can signal a pricing mistake. Always check that date on the airline’s own website.
• Set fare alerts on Skyscanner and Google Flights. Neither hunts error fares as such, but a sharp drop on a route you care about will trigger an alert.
• Check more than one departure airport. Some mistakes only affect one regional fare filing or currency, so a fare visible from Manchester might not show from London.
• Move quickly. Every hour the fare is live, more people book it and the airline is more likely to notice. Don’t call the airline to ask whether the price is right, as that only speeds up the fix.

Missing an error fare doesn’t mean missing your only chance at a cheap flight. Our guide to cheap flights from the UK covers the strategies that work even when you aren’t glued to a deal feed. And if you want to know whether flights get cheaper closer to departure, the short answer is sometimes, but far less predictably than you might hope.

How to book one safely

Finding an error fare is one thing. Booking it in a way that protects you if something goes wrong is another. These steps take a couple of minutes.

• Book direct with the airline where you can. If the fare shows on the airline’s own site, use it. A third-party booking adds another company between you and the airline if anything goes wrong.
• Pay by credit card. Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, your card provider is jointly liable with the seller for a breach of contract when a single item costs more than £100 and no more than £30,000. Booking through a third party can complicate a claim, which is another reason to book direct. Paying by debit card, you rely on your bank’s chargeback process instead.
• Screenshot everything: the fare before you book, the booking summary and the confirmation page.
• Watch for the airline’s confirmation and e-ticket. If nothing arrives, check your spam folder, then log into your account. If it’s still missing, contact the airline.
• Keep everything non-refundable away from this booking for now. The flight itself is refunded if cancelled. The danger is everything else you book around it.

Section 75 only applies to credit card payments, which is one more reason to pay by credit card rather than debit when you book an error fare.

What to do if the airline cancels

Some error fares stick and some don’t. If yours is cancelled, here’s what to expect and what to do.

• Expect your money back. The airline should return what you paid to your original payment method. If the refund doesn’t appear, chase the airline in writing.
• Don’t expect a rebooking at the error price. Some airlines offer a goodwill discount or credit, others only the refund.
• If the refund stalls and you paid by credit card for a single item over £100, raise a Section 75 claim with your card provider. For debit card payments, ask your bank about chargeback.
• If you lost money on other costs booked in reliance on the fare, talk to Citizens Advice or a consumer solicitor.
• If the airline won’t engage, the CAA has two approved alternative dispute resolution schemes for UK passengers, AviationADR and CEDR. ADR is free for consumers, but your airline has to belong to a scheme, so check the CAA website for which one it uses.

Error fares we are tracking right now

We flag error fares on Flight Tribe as soon as we find them. Keep an eye on our flight deals page, or join us on Facebook where we share the best flight deals every day. To tell a mistake from a planned sale, our guides on when Ryanair has sales and when flights are cheapest by season give you the context.

Your questions answered

What is the difference between an error fare and a sale?

A sale is something the airline chooses to run, with prices cut on purpose and often a booking window announced in advance. An error fare is unintentional, gets fixed as soon as the airline notices, and is usually gone within hours.

How long do error fares stay up?

Most error fares disappear within a few hours, though some last overnight if the mistake happens outside office hours. There’s no way to know when a fare will be corrected, so assume you have very little time from the moment you spot one.

Can budget airlines have error fares too?

Yes. Budget carriers face the same risks of typing mistakes, currency glitches and booking site faults as any full-service airline.

Should I get travel insurance for an error fare trip?

You should have travel insurance for any trip, error fare or not. The flight itself carries little risk, since a cancelled error fare should be refunded. The real exposure is other costs booked around the trip, so keep those flexible until the e-ticket arrives.

Is it legal to book an error fare?

Yes. Buying a fare an airline has published isn’t against the law. The airline may still cancel under its own terms, and if it does you should get your money back.

What is a glitch fare, and is it different from an error fare?

Not really. A glitch fare comes from a technical fault on a booking site rather than an airline staff mistake, but the practical situation and the risks are the same, and deal hunters use the terms interchangeably.

Flight Tribe finds and checks the best travel deals for UK travellers. Sign up to our email to get error fares, flash sales and money-saving deals straight to your inbox as soon as we spot them.

Jane Robinson

Jane Robinson is Senior Editor at Flight Tribe. She has a Master’s in English and Journalism, and writes about flight deals, holiday offers and practical ways UK travellers can spend less without wasting time on weak promotions. Jane has spent time living and working across Asia and New Zealand, which gave her a lasting interest in how people travel, eat, move around and spend their free time in different places.

At Flight Tribe, her work focuses on verified prices, realistic travel dates, booking terms and whether a deal is actually worth attention.

How Jane works
Jane checks offers against live supplier pages wherever possible, including prices, dates, departure points, baggage rules and booking conditions. She is quietly sceptical of anything that sounds too good to be true, and helps keep Flight Tribe’s travel advice useful, honest and easy to act on.

Editorial standards
Flight Tribe covers deals for readers first. Affiliate links do not decide whether an offer is worth writing about.