A Hong Kong travel website operator, Harold Yip, is waiting to see if his impossible good news will stay good: He bought a quarter-million dollars worth of airline tickets for $17,000 when ANA’s currency conversion system failed.
ANA’s Vietnamese-language website developed the glitch on April 19th, according to Bloomberg News, and it remained live and wrong for at least 12 hours, with at least 20 people buying tickets during that time.
The airline told Bloomberg it was “investigating the cause of the bug and the size of its damage,” and had not yet decided whether it would be required to honor the tickets at that price. While it is deciding, tickets remain valid and some travel may have already taken place.
Yip said he purchased 25 tickets at a major discount at the ‘discount’ prices on ANA’s Vietnam website. He said he even purchased a round-trip first class flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Aruba, via Tokyo and New York, for only $890 – a discount that’s close to 95 per cent off its original ticket price.
