Cathay sold tickets from HK to Lisbon at one-tenth of price

Less than two weeks after saying it had a ticketing error that gave away premium seats at huge discounts, Cathay Pacific has done it again.

This time, some visitors to their booking site got lucky on flights from Europe to Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post reported yesterday that the carrier offered first-class seats from Portugal to Hong Kong at a tenth of its original price of $16,000. Since Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. doesn’t fly direct from Lisbon to Hong Kong, the tickets included a leg to London, Zurich or Frankfurt through partner airlines, the newspaper said.

“We are aware of the error on some fares from Europe on our website because of an input issue,” a spokeswoman for Cathay said in a statement Sunday, adding the sale of such fares was stopped immediately and being probed. “For the very small number of customers who have purchased these tickets, we look forward to welcoming you on board to enjoy our premium services.”

The repeat of the glitch adds to the embarrassment the carrier faced last year when a sophisticated hack on Cathay’s computer systems exposed private information of 9.4 million passengers in the world’s biggest airline data breach. Asia’s largest international carrier is in the midst of a three-year turnaround program after losses in 2016 and 2017, with last year’s earnings due to be announced in March.

Around New Year’s day, Cathay sold such discounted round-trip business-class tickets from Vietnam to Canada and the U.S., and later said it would honor the fares. Bloomberg