u/flyiocarta

Not sure if this is of interest here, but I am building a gamified flight-hunting community called Spotters. Because I don’t want to self promote myself I want everyone who is interested in this to just ask me questions about it.

The basic idea: members submit fares they find, earn Miles for valid ones, and move through tiers. There are missions and seasons built around it, so it works like a leaderboard competition rather than just a forum.

For people who already spend time hunting deals, it is essentially a rewards layer on top of something they do anyway.

So I've been going down a rabbit hole with error fares for a while now and figured I'd share what I've learned because I keep seeing the same questions pop up here. Fair warning this got long so grab a coffee.

An error fare is when an airline or booking system accidentally prices a ticket way below what it should be. We're talking a €800 flight showing up for €79 kind of situation. It happens more than you'd think — currency conversion goes wrong, someone drops a zero during manual fare entry, an IT system has a moment — and suddenly there's a business class ticket to Tokyo for the price of a train to Brussels. They usually get fixed within a few hours, sometimes they last a day or two, occasionally longer. But you have to be fast.

The question everyone asks is whether they're actually legal to book and the answer is generally yes. EU rules basically say that if a price is displayed and you book it in good faith the airline has to honour it in most cases. The bigger airlines especially tend to just eat the cost because the alternative is cancelling thousands of bookings and dealing with the PR nightmare that comes with it. That said it's not guaranteed and I've heard of cases where airlines cancelled and just refunded everyone. But from what I've seen the majority do get honoured. The rule I personally use — if the price is crazy but not impossible just book it. €89 Brussels to New York? Book it immediately. €2 to anywhere in the world? That's probably a glitch that won't get honoured.

To give you an idea of what actually comes up — these are all real error fares from the past year that were bookable for real money. Brussels to New York return for €189 when the normal price sits around €800-1100. London to Bangkok return for €299 when it usually costs €650-900. Amsterdam to Tokyo return for €320 when normally you're paying €850 or more. Paris to LA return for €180 when the regular price is around €700-950. Each of these was live for a few hours before disappearing and some lasted longer — the New York one I think was up for almost two days which is unusually long for an error fare.

The hard part is finding them fast enough and honestly this is where most people struggle. By the time a deal gets shared in a WhatsApp group or someone posts it somewhere it's often already gone. What actually helps is being flexible with your dates because error fares almost never land on Christmas or peak summer dates. Having everything ready also makes a massive difference — passport details, card details, all of it sorted in advance so you can book in under 5 minutes when you find something.

The other thing I'd really stress is book first and research later. Most airlines let you cancel within 24 hours anyway so if you find something insane just book it and then figure out if it actually works for your schedule rather than sitting there checking your calendar while the price quietly disappears. Use a credit card if you can because it's way easier to deal with if something goes wrong. And don't book non-refundable hotels until the airline actually confirms the booking — learned that one the hard way.

That's pretty much everything I know about it. Happy to answer any questions if anyone has them. Also genuinely curious — what's the best error fare anyone here has actually managed to book? I feel like there are some good stories in this community.