Irish airline to honour incorrectly priced bookings

Apr 18, 2008, 12:51 GMT

Dublin - Irish airline Aer Lingus said Friday it would offer economy class seats to all customers who booked flights sold at an incorrect price, national broadcaster RTE reported.

Consumers were furious Thursday after the airline retracted business-class tickets to the United States advertised online at 5 euros (8 dollars).

Up to 300 customers booked the tickets, which normally retail for over 1,700 euros, on Wednesday morning, but later received an e-mail from Aer Lingus cancelling the flights.

The airline blamed the incorrect pricing on a technical error in its reservation system. A spokesman for the airline said customers should have been aware there was a mistake in the pricing.

However, the airline's decision sparked a public backlash. Customers who'd bought the tickets rang RTE's afternoon phone-in programme to protest and the Consumers' Association of Ireland said Aer Lingus had to honour the contracts.

'Aer Lingus really has to negotiate with its customers and can't just dismiss them,' Dermott Jewell of the Consumers' Association told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'You can't just cancel something because you made a mistake.'

On Friday the airline apologised for any inconvenience caused to its customers and said it would be contacting them to rebook their travel arrangements. It also said it accepted that customers genuinely believed the price offered was correct.