How to Find Airline Error Fares / Mistakes Automatically

Did you know that every now and then an airline publishes what is known as an error fare or a mistake fare. They are also sometimes referred to as "fat finger fares" alluding to the possible human error involved when manually entering a flight price into airline pricing systems.

These fares are snapped up notoriously quickly when they do occur and have the potential to save you hundreds off international flight prices.

In this article we explain everything you know about them and show you how to discover these magic error fares automatically.

Why Do They Occur?

Their are a multitude of reasons why these fares can appear. The bottom line is that airline pricing is extremely complex and with most systems that rely heavily on technology the occasional glitch is bound to happen.

Sometimes the number nine is replaced accidentally by a zero, other times it is due to a misplaced decimal point or even a currency conversion error.

Occasionally the mistake comes down to human error where a tired employee at the end of a hard working may accidentally enter 100 instead of 1000.

How Much Can I Save?

You have the potential to save hundreds off international flight routes through this method. Not only that but you have the potential to save even more by comparing the same flight on multiple travel search engines (as much as 20%) through detailed price checks and comparison.   

How Do You Find These Error Fares?

Traditionally you could only find these fares by one of 2 ways -

1. either constantly scour sites looking for those ridiculously cheap flights.
2. sign up to some sort of subscription service which would hunt down these fares for you.

What's The Problem With These 2 Ways Of Finding Error Fares?

Well, first of all constantly scouring travel sites looking for these fares is impractical and you are very unlikely to stumble across an error fare if you were to manually go searching for them through traditional travel agents and airline websites.

Subscribing to an email service that notifies you of these fares have become popular recently, however, a lot of these services send irrelevant deals and notoriously jam up your inbox - basically lacking that laser targeting required to give you the deal which is ideal for you.

So What's The Solution?

After examining the current solutions out there FlightsFinder set about trying to find a more elegant solution to finding cheap airline error fares which were super relevant to each user's intent and flexibility.

We utilised deep data found from over 1200 travel sources and millions of previous flight queries to display the cheapest fares for any search query departing from any particular airport in the world in the last 15 days.

Within our data error fares are quickly discovered alongside truly cheap and genuine time-sensitive travel deals published by the airlines.

After all our investigations we finally present the world's first search engine to uncover airline error fares price matched against multiple flight comparison engines:

Try it now -  the worlds first airline error fare search engine with meta meta search.

or watch our explainer video below:

How To Use FlightsFinder?

There are multiple ways in which you can use our search engine to discover the cheapest possible flights or discover an error fare if there are any:

1.) Fly anywhere within the whole year

This search is for those who don't care where they fly to - they simply want to see the absolute cheapest flights ever published from their local airport. This search is for those who have maximum flexibility with their flying times and this search will uncover the cheapest possible fares.

For this search on the FlightsFinder homepage follow these instructions:

Departure (Your local airport) > Going to (Everywhere) > Flexible dates (Select whole year) > Search.

2.) Fly anywhere within the whole month

This search is for those who don't care where they fly to but they have constraints with when they can fly - For example - I can fly anywhere but it has to be in the month of December. This search will show you the best deals everywhere within that particular month.

For this search on the FlightsFinder homepage follow these instructions:

Departure (Your local airport) > Going to (Everywhere) > Flexible dates (Select Whole Month - i.e December in calendar) > Search.

3.) Fly to a particular destination within the whole year

This search is for those who have to fly to a particular destination but want to see the cheapest fares to that destination within the entire year. For example - Show me the cheapest possible flight ever published from my airport to New York City:

For this search on the FlightsFinder homepage follow these instructions:

Departure (Your local airport) > Going to (Enter a City - e.g New York) > Flexible dates (Select Whole Year) > Search.

4.) Fly to a particular destination within the whole month

This search is for those who want to travel to a particular destination but want to see the best flights in a particular month. For example - show me the cheapest flights from London to San Francisco in January:

For this search on the FlightsFinder homepage follow these instructions:

Departure (Your local airport) > Going to (Enter a City - e.g San Francisco) > Flexible dates (Select Whole Month - i.e January in calendar) > Search.

Do Airlines Have To Honour These Fares?

The airline is under no obligation to honour these super cheap error fares but your chances are increased greatly if you follow these guidelines -

1.) Try to book directly through the airline's website. FlightsFinder not only displays the error fare but also shows numerous options of where to book including in many cases the airline's own website.

2.) Book quickly before the airline figure out what's up. Error fares don't last long at all so you have to pretty quick to book them as soon as they are published. CheapFlightsFinder takes care to only publish fares that were live in the last 15 days.

3.) Don't book other plans till your seat is secure. Sometimes the error fare is not honoured but don't worry, airlines must reimburse all out-of-pocket expenses made in confidence upon the reservation.

Is It Ethical?

Some people question the morality of going after and booking super cheap error fares - they claim that by doing so you are effectively cheating in the market and are practically thieving the airlines out of their rightful share.

We at FlightsFinder beg to differ - 

It is the airline's responsibility to ensure that any fares they publish are accurate and correct and there can be no blame on a consumer if they see a very cheap price and snap it up quickly.

Airlines should take the time to put the correct systems in place to flag up any irregular pricing, in our opinion the consumer can hardly be blamed for the fact that they have not taken the time and effort to do that when it is well within their capability.

Furthermore, The airlines themselves certainly have no moral dilemma about charging exorbitant fees for honest customer mistakes and charging ridiculous amounts to fix things that take little effort on their part. 

Furthermore, there is no real sign saying it is an error fare, from the consumer's point of view it simply looks like a great deal.

Unless the consumer is breaking terms and conditions of booking a fare such as putting down false details to book a flight then we see no reason why it should be frowned upon or discouraged.

Ultimately it is down to the airline to honour the mistake or not, so either way, both parties are under no obligation or loss, if the airlines honour the fare all well and good, if not the consumer is reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses made in confidence upon the reservation.

In Conclusion

FlightsFinder is the only site which automatically uncovers potential error fares and then price matches those fares against all of the leading search engines potentially saving up to 20% more.

We hope you enjoy using our service and sincerely believe it will help you get away on your next vacation for a very pleasing price.

Click Here to Start your Search :)