Japan airline blunder sees business-class tickets to US sell for as little as US$550

All Nippon Airways, or ANA, says it will honour the tickets for those people who saw the mistake and jumped on its website quickly to book and pay

Most of the tickets were for travel starting in Jakarta, through to Japan and then onto New York, and would normally costs thousands of US dollars

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The Empire State Building and skyline of Manhattan. Most of the tickets were for travel starting in Jakarta, through to Japan and then onto New York – and back again. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:02pm, 19 Apr 2023

Eagle-eyed travellers have snapped up US$10,000 business-class tickets on Japan’s ANA Holdings Ltd. for just a few hundred dollars after a currency conversion blunder.

ANA has said it will honour the tickets for those people who saw the mistake and jumped on its website quickly to book and pay - the glitch was circulating widely on some social media platforms - but those who only reserved the tickets will have to pay a “just price”, according to an airline statement on Wednesday.

Most of the tickets were for travel starting in Jakarta, through to Japan and then onto New York and back again into various Southeast Asia destinations, including Singapore and Bali – business class all the way.

ANA said the mistake stemmed from an error on its Vietnam website, which listed an erroneous currency conversion. Photo: AFP

The Japanese carrier said the mistake stemmed from an error on its Vietnam website, which listed an erroneous currency conversion. It didn’t state how many people had secured discount tickets and added it was “currently investigating the cause of the bug and the size of its damage”.

Several people are known to have successfully booked what is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime bargain.

Johnny Wong, who works in the airline industry, snagged a round-trip ticket from Jakarta to Honolulu via Narita airport in Tokyo for 13 million dong (US$550). “I never thought I’d catch such a deal,” he said. The 29-year-old said he felt under pressure to enter his details as fast as he could, racing against time before ANA realised its error. That fare is currently selling for US$8,200.

It isn’t the first time an airline has inadvertently sold premium seats at a steep discount.