The largest Russian air carrier Aeroflot canceled cheap tickets to Thai Phuket, and the company found itself in center scandal. About 500 passengers received notifications that the tickets they had purchased were invalid because they had been sold by mistake. But can a price that is too low be grounds for cancellation? And what can people count on in such a situation?
Last week it became known about a scandal involving Aeroflot. Tickets from Yekaterinburg for flights to Phuket unexpectedly appeared on the carrier’s website at extremely low prices. Tourist Telegram channels and blogs immediately drew attention to this appropriate profile. It was offered to fly to Thailand for symbolic money for this destination – for example, tickets for November were on sale for 6.5 thousand rubles there and 20 thousand rubles back. Many managed to get their bearings and pay for the flight – directly through the airline’s website or through intermediaries. But planning a vacation in Thailand and packing your bags in anticipation of departure turned out to be premature. Literally a few days later, customers received letters from Aeroflot. They said that the unusually low-priced tickets were sold “due to technical reasons”, were sold incorrectly, and were subject to cancellation. The Aviatorschina Telegram channel published one of these messages: “Unfortunately, for technical reasons, on October 19, 2023, a ticket was issued to you incorrectly for the specified direction. Our specialists have resolved the discrepancy, but we ask for your understanding that we were forced to cancel your reservation and will issue a refund.”
Aeroflot offered passengers to purchase new tickets and use a promotional code for a 30% discount on current prices. As additional compensation, the carrier decided to award the affected passengers 5,000 miles in the Aeroflot Bonus program.
The promotional code is valid from October 21 to October 27, but here, too, some nuances were discovered: it turned out that it does not apply to all flights, and it can only be entered once.
Human factor?
On average, tickets from Yekaterinburg to Phuket cost about 45-60 thousand rubles. There are options with a transfer in Moscow, where the cost reaches 150 thousand rubles.
As RBC draws attention, citing its own source familiar with the operating features of Aeroflot’s reservation system (since 2022, the company, like other Russian carriers, has been using the Leonardo system), with a high degree of probability the error did not occur due to a technical failure , but because of the human factor. Perhaps an airline employee entered incorrect fares into the system – for example, forgetting to print one order of numbers. Since tariffs for Phuket are calculated depending on the dollar exchange rate, there was immediately a large difference in price.
The source found it difficult to say how many tickets buyers managed to purchase at reduced rates.
According to the Flightradar service, Aeroflot currently flies to Phuket 19 times a week – from Moscow, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok and Novosibirsk. In addition, at the end of October the carrier is going to launch flights from St. Petersburg. Direct flights from Yekaterinburg will start on October 30 and will operate twice a week. The flights are planned to be operated on Airbus A330 airliners, which can accommodate up to 300 people.
Lawyers specializing in cases in the tourism industry call Aeroflot’s behavior illegal. The route and cost of the flight posted on the carrier’s website constitute the essential terms of the air transportation agreement. When purchasing a ticket, the passenger enters into an offer agreement with the company, and the carrier cannot terminate it unilaterally. Otherwise, as experts believe, the consumer has the right to demand that the service be provided to him at the price at which he bought it, or to compensate for losses if he has to purchase tickets for a similar flight at a higher price.
Not a reason
The Sverdlovsk Transport Prosecutor’s Office responded to publications that appeared in the media regarding the cancellation of cheap tickets to Phuket: the department promised to conduct an inspection and give an assessment based on its results.
The Passengers Union regards the airline’s actions as a violation of the law: if Aeroflot sold tickets at a certain price, the company must carry out the transportation. The organization noted that passengers need to try to defend their interests in court – previously, in similar cases, judges took the side of consumers of goods and services.
There really is a similar precedent, although it has nothing to do with the transport sector. In June 2023, the Supreme Court of Russia (*aggressor country) considered the claim of Volgograd resident Stanislav Anokhin. The man installed the application of the capital’s Central Department Store, entered there at the time of a technical failure and purchased a number of items at prices ranging from 19 to 129 rubles – and we are talking about branded clothing. Anokhin never received his things, so he went to court. The seller insisted that due to a glitch on the trading house’s website, the prices were displayed incorrectly, so the purchase and sale agreement should be declared invalid. The plaintiff’s demands were rejected by the courts of three instances, but his position was supported by the Supreme Court, which issued the following verdict: “The price is fixed at the moment of concluding an agreement between the buyer and the online store, which is determined by the moment the order is placed and a number is assigned to it; the seller can change the price unilaterally not entitled”.
Thus, the low cost of a ticket cannot be a reason for cancellation. Neither in civil legislation nor in the Air Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) does a technical failure when calculating the cost of a ticket appear as a basis for cancellation. As experts note, it is important that when concluding a contract for the carriage of a passenger, both parties agree on the cost of services – both the client and the airline.
If the flight is not cancelled, but the tickets are nevertheless cancelled, the passengers’ claims against the carrier are justified. However, if the contract does not establish a fine for the carrier for such actions, going to court may not bring results.
Not an isolated case
Aeroflot offered passengers who bought tickets through agents to apply for a refund to the place where the purchase was made.
Ozon Travel noted that the passenger does not enter into an agreement for the provision of transport services directly with Ozon – the company only sells tickets from partner carriers, and the agreement is valid between the airline and the passenger. The service, in turn, provides information support, and sometimes makes discounts and arranges promotions to offer customers tickets at a low price. But flights should still be profitable for airlines.
Yandex.Travel also indicated that the company does not sell tickets and operates as a search engine – similar to, for example, Aviasales. As representatives of the service noted, errors in tariffs or incorrect data entry occur with almost all carriers. This happens for various reasons – for example, due to an incorrect calculation of the total cost of a multi-leg flight with several connections or an incorrectly specified fuel surcharge amount. If problems of this kind arise, airlines resort to various scenarios: either they offer the passenger to pay the required amount, or they cancel the ticket due to problems with the service. However, it also happens that the carrier confirms the purchase of a ticket at a reduced price, but imposes some restrictions – for example, it does not take into account miles for the flight in the bonus program or does not allow changes to the ticket data if the passenger does not pay the remaining portion of the “normal” amount .