It’s finally time for a mistake fare episode! Kyle and Gunnar talk about the most exciting fares in the world of flight deals, when airlines accidentally sell tickets at ridiculous discounts. The guys talk through their favorite mistake fares from over the years, how to find and book the next one, and what you need to watch for. Plus, they discuss why holiday flight deals are so much better this year, their new favorite mileage program that might not be on your radar, and Delta’s possibly problematic credit card rule.
It’s finally time for a mistake fare episode! Kyle and Gunnar talk about the most exciting fares in the world of flight deals, when airlines accidentally sell tickets at ridiculous discounts. The guys talk through their favorite mistake fares from over the years, how to find and book the next one, and what you need to watch for. Plus, they discuss why holiday flight deals are so much better this year, their new favorite mileage program that might not be on your radar, and Delta’s possibly problematic credit card rule.
Thanks to HotelSlash for sponsoring this episode of the show! Try it out today: Use promo code THRIFTYTRAVELER for a free 90-day trial – plus, get $20 off your first prepaid booking!
00:00 - Previewing the next edition of the (in)famous Thrifty Traveler company retreat
02:10 - Holiday flight deals are really good this year, but why?
06:35 - Something Hot: Is this our new favorite mileage program? All about Japan Airlines Mileage Bank
13:55 - Delta’s little-known and possibly problematic credit card rule
17:16 - A word from our sponsor: HotelSlash, the easiest way to book a cheaper hotel stay – and rebook when prices drop.
18:15 - Mistake fare draft: Our six favorite mistake fares of all time
25:30 - Everything you need to know about mistake fares: How to book them, where to find them, and how they happen in the first place
46:50 - Listener Question: Maximizing credit card spend on a big house project
51:30 - On the spot: The flight deal that got away
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunner Olson, a travel writer and flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler, alongside our executive editor Content Czar and the man I'm calling the mistake Fare mortician. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle. Nobody does a better mistake. Fare autopsy than you. How do you like the nickname?
You know, I guess it all runs in the family because my father-in-law is a mortician. So I much prefer analyzing mistake fares than human beings. In an autopsy. Yeah, I'll take it.
Well, nobody's better at it than you. It's a mistake. Fare episode Today, if you didn't read the title of the episode 'cause we had a doozy recently, we're gonna talk all about that.
But quickly, Kyle we're heading out on our company retreat to beautiful Palm Springs this month. Our company retreat is always a ton of fun. Do you have any good, fun memories from company retreats of past.
Every time we talk about going on our retreat, all I think about is peeling back another layer in the Peter Thornton Onion.
Because every single year we go on this retreat and we meet up with Peter who lives out in California. So we only see him a couple of times a year. We find out some new element of the story that he shared about playing guitar as Cave Matthews Band for Ja Rule. Paul Walker, RIP and Vin Diesel in Cancun on Spring break, 2001.
So I'm just excited to learn more and hopefully share it on the pod once we've got some more details.
He never seems to run outta stories, but he is never forthcoming with them. But go listen to Peter's episode of this podcast. He told the cave Matthews Band story a little bit in that episode.
That was a really fun one. Alright, Kyle, today on the show we're gonna talk about mistake fares, what we call the holy Grail of flight deals. We're gonna dissect what they are, how to go about booking them, and then this recent example that kind of brought it front of mind for us. Plus, we're gonna chat about this ridiculous Delta credit card rule, a very little known loyalty program that might all of a sudden be our favorite.
And we're gonna hear from some listeners too. All that and more. Welcome back to the Th Traveler podcast.
Alright, as we always do to start the show, Kyle, I want to find something out today. Are you flying over the holidays this year?
I'm not one of these years my wife and I will take the advice that we give Thrifty traveler readers and listeners and go somewhere abroad over Thanksgiving because it's one of the best times to travel internationally while everybody's flying across the country to get home for Thanksgiving.
There are a lot of great deals, whether you're using cash or points to get somewhere for a long weekend or a long week over Thanksgiving. But it wasn't in the cards this year. I'm just staying local. What about you?
We are actually we're. Flying over Thanksgiving. We almost always do which is a crazy time of year to fly.
But we have this kind of roaming Thanksgiving celebration that Megan's family and her friends all have. And this year we're going to Colorado. But the key is instead of going like Wednesday to Sunday, we booked Saturday to Saturday this year. So I'm gonna work remote a little bit on Thanksgiving week as usual, but, what we've been seeing, and the reason why I brought this up is that holiday flight deals are really good this year. Exceptionally good, and I think this has a lot to do with the days of the week that these holidays fall on. We have Thanksgiving. Flight deals are always good abroad, right? If you wanna go to Europe, it's pretty easy to find like a really cheap fare over Thanksgiving.
'cause Europe doesn't do Thanksgiving. They don't care. So, and it's usually like a domestic travel holiday. But the interesting thing is, besides those regular. Thanksgiving fares over Christmas and New Year's, we've seen a lot of good stuff domestically, and that's because Christmas is coming Thursday and New Year's Day is coming on a Thursday.
So that means Christmas Eve, new Year's Eve are both Wednesdays, and that means that, you know, those are already some of the cheapest days to travel. So if you're willing to travel. On the holiday or maybe the day before the holiday on Christmas Eve, new Year's Eve, Christmas or New Year's, you're gonna find some really good deals.
Even up until, like right now, some of the deals we found for Thrift Traveler Premium over the last few weeks have had some really low rates flying, on the day of travel on the holiday. So it's been kind of interesting to see that and it's kinda left some possibilities wide open. I got my mom booked on a fare up to Minneapolis that leaves on Christmas Eve.
And it was really cheap. It was, less than a hundred bucks from Chicago.
I mean, year in, year out, traveling on the holiday or the day just before is typically one of the best things you can do. And it just reinforces the need to be flexible to find those savings. But the fact that this year, all the puzzle pieces fit together to find a cheaper fare on the holiday because that day prior falls on an off peak Wednesday.
Yeah, I mean there have been, I would say, an unusual amount of deals that include. In some cases Thanksgiving, though, I think that's rare. 'cause I mean, I don't know if you know this, but Thanksgiving always falls on a Thursday, but for the rest of the holiday season the Christmas and New Year's availability, I would say, has been stronger, deeper, and in many cases cheaper than we've seen in at least five years.
Another little hack on that is especially a good time for business class 'cause there's no business travel over the holidays. So if you take a look at that business class rate, even in cash, you might be surprised at how cheap it is. A few other tips, if you really want to pull something like this off over the holidays, those early morning or late night flights.
I mean, as usual, they're gonna be a little bit cheaper, but especially during the holidays you know, book that first flight of the day, it makes things pretty easy. And then, of course, my evergreen advice forever and always avoid Sundays, don't fly on Sundays. It's never fun. It's always expensive. Avoid
Sundays.
The last few times I've traveled, and this is not even holiday season, so I can only imagine it's worse, but the last few times I've flown, I've flown on Saturdays and man it is. Great. The airport is a breeze. I basically don't stop walking. Lounges are much emptier than they are on busier travel days.
It is a treat, so if you can build anything around a Saturday, not only is it gonna be cheaper, but it's gonna be much more pleasant in the airport and probably on the plane too.
That's all good advice. Just a quick PSA for everybody to take a look at some holiday flights if you were avoiding them, or if you wanna avoid the long road trip.
There's some good stuff out there, but the time is now. To book, let's jump into something hot and something cold. You ready to pivot? Let's do it. If you can't figure out what this format is, like I said last week, I don't know what you're doing here. Something hot, something good, something cold, something bad for travelers.
We're gonna start with something hot. Because they were essentially impossible to earn for American travelers. I have never given Japan Airlines mileage. Bank miles. One single thought in my 32 years of life, Kyle, but recently Capital One added jaw mileage bank as a transfer partner at a two capital one points.
Transfers to 1.5 mileage bank miles ratio. And then built also has a one-to-one transfer ratio with Japan Airlines, mileage bank. Those are both pretty new. Suddenly these points are easy to earn. So you started out on one of your legendary digging expeditions, and what did you find in the jaw mileage bank sweet spots.
I gotta correct you?
I gotta,
we gotta shout out cave Matthews himself, Mr. Peter Thornton, for flagging this. He found some discrepancies, which I think we all expected to find with this program. As it became easier to earn these points, we started to find some incredible opportunities.
So the first and most obvious one is just that not only can you book Japan Air. Business and in some cases first class for as low as 55,000 points for a business class fare between the United States and Tokyo. And typically as low as 90,000 to 110,000 for first class, but. Japan Airlines also gives its members who are using these mileage bank points much better availability at slightly higher rates.
So it's really hard to find those 55,000 mile business class redemptions, unless if you're looking basically a full year out. But you can pretty readily find 75,000 mile redemptions for, you know, Dallas and New York and la. All of the routes that have Japan Airlines newest aircraft, that they're brand new business class suites on them, I mean for 75,000 points.
And all of the sudden those points are much easier to earn than they were just a few months ago. That's. That's, that's good. That's worth celebrating. Those are not deals that you're gonna find through American Airlines for 60,000 advantage miles, because American Airlines just doesn't get that kind of award space.
Would I trade you know, 20,000 more points for having it actually be available when I want a book? I mean, yes, every day, every time, and twice on Sundays. It's a pretty amazing deal there.
Exactly. And then more importantly, you know, the question was always. What other deals are out there? I mean, Japan Airlines is part of the One World Alliance.
So you can, in theory, book American Airlines and Alaska and Finn Air and British Airways, as well as a handful of other different partners. And so as our team started to dig into this, what we found is. I would say one of the best, if not the best sweet spot in mileage programs that we've seen in years.
And so I'll put it this way, you can book a one way business class ticket from basically anywhere in the United States. To Europe for 60,000 Japan Airlines miles. But if you book Round Tripp, it's not 120,000 miles, excuse me, it's 85,000 miles round trip. So by adding in the return flight, you drop the per segment costs substantially.
I can't do the math. I'm not gonna embarrass myself on air, but that's a great deal. And the same thing holds true going down to South America. You can book for as low as 80,000 miles round trip in business class, this applies to economy redemptions as well. There are significant savings when you book round trip and set up one way separately.
And it's all thanks to an. To my mind, completely unique quirk with how Japan airlines sets award prices. So like many other airlines, Japan Airlines uses a distance based award chart. The longer you fly, the more miles you're gonna need. And they do this based in bands of, is it under 2000 miles? Is it 2001 miles to 4,000 miles?
Is it 4,000? One miles to 6,000 miles? But what they do that's different than every other airline is when you're booking a round trip. Award flight. They don't add the one way out and then tally up the distance of the one way back. They add the distance of that total trip together to give you your total, which means.
You know, if it's a 3000 mile, one-way flight from the United States to Europe, and it prices out under that next highest ban, that's why it's not just going to 120,000 miles for a round trip. It prices out even lower because the total distance is all that matters when you're redeeming Japan Airlines, miles for these redemptions, this is.
One of the best opportunities that I can remember seeing and you know, really flies in the face of the advice that we've given on this podcast on our site for years, which is just book one Way separately. This is a clear case where this is an amazing deal if you can book Round Trip and it also, I'll get off my soapbox and then stop ranting and raving about how amazing this is shortly.
It also works for multi-city, so maybe you don't wanna fly round Trip. Into London and home from Heathrow. But you could fly to London and fly back from Paris or Amsterdam or wherever else in Europe and build together a really good trip with some significant savings doing this.
Yeah. And it, you know that Capital One transfer ratio of two.
Capital one points to 1.5 and Mileage Bank might have been like a little annoying when we first saw that at the outset. But now looking at this and these round trip prices, I mean, again, not gonna do the math on the fly, but it's still an insane deal. And you know, just the convenience of having that round trip.
Booked and just how few miles it takes. And if you have bill rewards, it's just one-to-one. So it makes it really clean and easy that, you know, all of a sudden becomes one of the best uses of bill points too, in my
opinion. No question. One last thing here. Emirates did us all dirty earlier this year by, you know, after years of holding off while they made.
Significant devaluations on their flights to and from their hub in Dubai. They left their flights to Europe, so they fly from JFK to Milan and Newark to Athens. They left that pretty much unchanged. They didn't tack on all of these nasty fees until just a few months ago when they decided, oh, you know, if you wanna fly business class on this route, it's gonna cost you $900 in fees instead of less than 250 round trip.
But you can use this exact same loophole to book Emirates business class round trip from either JFK to Milan or Newark to Athens for 85,000 miles and under $250 in taxes and fees. Not only is it significantly cheaper than sending those points to Emirates on the tax. I mean, you're saving close to $700, but you're also saving you know, almost 20 or more than 20,000 miles as well.
This is a phenomenal deal.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, the
best way to book Emirates. Do you think that the Emirates executives in Dubai are using o the way you just used O in that example? I think it's a universal language. Yeah. The Emirates upper Midwest office. Yeah, yeah. Setting airfares.
They've got a big presence in Cloquet.
I hear.
All right, Kyle, let's go onto something cold and I'll start this. I'll pose this as a question. Did you know that you have to bring the credit card with which you booked your flight to the airport with you when flying Delta?
This feels like something that we've talked about when we see it in the terms and conditions somewhere, and to say like, huh, that's strange.
Does anybody else do this? Has anybody heard about this? And you know, it's just something that. You know, to my mind, we just haven't heard of being enforced until recently, which, you know, you spotted in the headlines a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah. This was completely new to me. This derailed half of a day of work for me because I was so blown away by this rule.
But was that the
same day you were practicing Santiago de Compostela in the mirror? That's
right. I've burned a whole day on that. Just eight hours of, yeah. This is the best job on the planet, everybody. I want you to know that. Alright. So this came about. So Delta's terms and conditions explicitly state in a section called credit and debit card presentation.
The travelers may have to show an airline representative the credit or debit card that they used to purchase the ticket in order to get their boarding pass. It was discovered by a man named Herb. We, herb Weisbaum, who was denied a boarding pass for a Delta flight from London to Seattle a few weeks ago.
'cause the card he booked the fare width, was sitting in a drawer at home in Seattle. We wrote all about his saga for a story on our website. You can check it out. The reason I bring this up is. I could see this being really problematic in a lot of ways. Like for one children or young adults traveling on tickets booked by a parent or guardian.
What happens if you need to show your proof of your credit card that you purchased? The fare with two business travelers, like from small businesses traveling on tickets booked by their employer, and then three people like us who have several credit cards and keep most of their cards in a drawer at home.
The card I use to book all my airfare, my Amex platinum card does not travel with me. Until now. So in a statement to us, Delta did say that most travelers don't have to show their cards, and for privacy and security reasons, they wouldn't clarify kind of when you'd be required to. We have a member of our team who used to work in ticketing at Delta, and she told us that this is a longstanding rule.
And usually the only itineraries that would flag this requirement were flights to Africa and Asia, where apparently Delta thinks fraud is more common. So I guess you weren't as surprised as I was about this rule, Kyle, but do you see what I see and that this could be a big problem for a lot of travelers?
Oh, completely. I think if nothing else, everybody listening to this should probably think about throwing whichever card they use to book their Delta flights into their wallet. And look, this may well be bigger than just a Delta problem. In fact, it probably is, but it's not spelled out in the terms of United or American or Alaska or Southwest or you know, everywhere down the list.
It among the major US airlines unique to Delta. And you know, I understand that Delta, you know, this is a clear anti-fraud measure and that means that Delta can't say exactly when they will or will not enforce this policy, but at the same time, they're being just phenomenally unhelpful in helping set expectations for when this might be something that you need to keep in mind, and I think in particular for the situation you flagged about booking travel for a family member and especially minors who don't have a credit card of their own, this is a situation that people are gonna need to prepare for.
Yeah, for sure. Alright, we're gonna talk all about mistake fares in the second half of the show, but first we're gonna take a quick break.
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Okay, welcome back. It is time for the extra mile where we dig a little deeper into a topic.
In this week, we're talking about mistake fares, the holy grail of flight deals, which can lead to some of the best fares in the history of travel. When the airlines are more likely, their computer systems make errors in putting fares. What the end result is is $134 round trip flights to Ireland business class, flights to Europe for 3000 points, $600 business class flights to Hong Kong and much more.
I wanna nuts and bolts this thing, Kyle, I want you to tell us exactly how mistake fares work. We're turning nuts and bolts into a verb. It's my podcast, Kyle. Nuts and bolts is a verb now, so we're gonna nuts and bolts this thing. But first I want to just give people an idea of what some of our favorite mistake fares are.
So we're doing a mini draft, three a piece. You get to draft first, and we're going our three favorite mistake fares of all time.
Alright? And in number three. I'm taking most of the mistake fares on this list are gonna be cash fares, but a couple of years ago, air France, KLM flying blue goofed and sold business class redemptions to Croatia from Canada for as low as 13,000 miles each way.
Instead of more like 50 or 60,000 miles each way. They had also got as low as 5,000. Miles each way to Provence, France, which included a business class flight over to Paris and then a train ride to Provence. And a couple other deals that went. Pretty quickly, but we're even better. This is maybe the only one on the list that was not actually honored.
Air France canceled almost all of those Fares, but I think it still merits a spot on the list. I'm kind of bummed that you put
those two together because I was gonna take one of those. I was gonna take either Greece and Croatia or the Provence, France one. The train connection one was pretty hilarious.
You let me go first.
That's on you, buddy.
Okay. With my third pick I'm taking. A one of the pandemic specials Atlanta to Santiago, Chile for $62 round trip nonstop on Delta. That was the craziest thing I've ever seen. It looked like a photoshopped image, but we had several members of our team and several thrifty Traveler premium members book that one.
But a TL to Santiago for $62 is my.
Three pick. That was my number two. We have to clarify, we have a story all about mistake fares on our site, and we include this one as an example and we explicitly say this is not photoshopped because it's insane. That typically is a $1,200 round trip fare, more or more sold for 63 US dollars.
Your pick number two going a deal we found in the spring of 2024, Minneapolis and Chicago to Dublin, Ireland as low as $134 round trip. I think this maybe was the single most popular mistake fare that we've ever sent our members. I mean, the number of emails that we got from members who booked this, I think ended up being close to at least a hundred, maybe more.
And for good reason, I mean $134, when that fare should typically cost at least $700, if not more, is pretty special.
Yeah. Okay. Mine, it was, man, I don't remember exactly when it was. I think it was like two, maybe three years ago now. It was JFK to London in Virgin business class for under $900 round trip.
It was one of those fares we couldn't even believe our eyes. It took us a while to vet it out because it just seemed impossible. But that's, you know, at least, oh God, that, that fare must usually go for something close to 2,500, $3,000. Oh, yeah. On a really good day. And the fact that it was below $900 was clearly a mistake and an unbelievable one.
And they honored that. We knew of a bunch of people who booked that and traveled on that.
You know, it's better than $900 round trip to London under $600 round trip to Hong Kong. Vietnam and Thailand. The only mistake fare on this list that I actually booked and took, this deal popped up in the summer of 2018, so it's been a few years now, but it was for travel in 2019.
This was, I wanna say three weeks before my wife and I got married. So once it came through, I sent my wife a text and I said, do you want to go to Vietnam next year in business class? You have five minutes to respond. She didn't get back to me. She was kind of heads down at work. So I messaged my friend Jim and said, let's book this.
Let's book it now. Booked it. The deal died probably 10 minutes after that. And Jim and I took a really awesome trip to Vietnam together in 2019, flying Hong Kong Airlines. That's a really, really good one.
All right. For my number one, I'm not gonna choose the one that we found just a few days ago because we'll talk about that one later.
But this one from earlier this year was. Thousand dollars round trip to Europe in Lufthansa business class. This Lufthansa was selling fares that were clearly missing lots of surcharges. And it was mostly from like Charlotte was on this deal. Miami, or no, sorry, Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia. A couple of AA hubs flying star lines partners across the pond from 1000 round trip up to like 1400 round trip to all over Scandinavia and Northern Europe.
Another insane deal. The round trip pricing on that is wild when you break it down, how much surcharges they missed on that one. So, all right. That was a fun little draft. So, Kyle, now that we know what some examples are. What is a mistake and how do you know that it's a mistake, fare, versus just a really,
really, really good deal?
There's a short answer and there's a longer answer. The short answer probably involves a Supreme Court ruling involving pornography where the justice said, you know it when you see it. I think that's kind of the short answer for a mistake. Fare. It's just, if it's too good to be true, it may well be a mistake.
Fare? The longer answer is that. Airlines just goof sometimes, right? They, there's a currency conversion error. Somebody actually just misses a zero when they, when they type, type a fare in. I think, you know, for my number one, pick that Hong Kong Airlines business class fare for, you know, under $600 round trip very clearly, that was supposed to be like $5,600, not $560 round trip.
And the the bigger answer, the most frequent thing that we see is when an airline truly messes up. They just forget part of the fare that they're building. So you know, when you go on Google flights or you know your other favorite inferior flight search engine and you see a round, you see like that big round number.
There's much more to airfare than that and you can dig in using tools like ITA Matrix, which is basically like Google flights on steroids and see that, you know, there is the fare. But sometimes that's a pretty small amount. And then there is a laundry list of government taxes and surcharges and additional airport fees.
All of those things build into the final amount. This is the reason why Spirit and Frontier and other airlines like them can sell tickets for. $19 round trip because the actual fare itself might only be like 2 cents each way. And then the rest of that is just taxes and fees, and they make all of their money on selling seats and bags and all of those extra things.
But increasingly, where we see. Mistake fares crop up is an airline forgets one of these big elements, namely big surcharges. So in addition to the fare, the airline might charge what they call a fuel surcharge, which, you know, on an economy trip that might be $300 round trip on a business class seat, that might be more like $2,000 round trip.
So the the first thing that, one of the first things that we always do when. We start to suspect that there's a mistake. Fare. One of those two good to be true things is actually look at the composition of these fares and see is there anything that's missing that makes us think Yeah, the airline actually goofed on this one.
Yeah, that's, it's always really interesting 'cause I called you at the top of the show, the mistake. Fare mortician. And when we find these insane deals, we. Make sure, first of all, that we're getting them out to our members so that everyone has a chance to book it really quickly. But then what you do right away is you start digging into the fare structure and see like, all right, where, where was the error?
Like what, what fee is missing? And nobody does that faster or better than you. The mistake. Fare mortician, Kyle Potter. We tell people mistake fares are really fun. It's like one of the coolest things you can do in travel. If you can book a round trip flight to Europe for $130, that's amazing.
Probably not a good strategy to rely on traveling on mistake fares, but they're not as infrequent as
we once presumed. Right? We've told people for years that mistake fares happen once or twice a year at most, and look like they're getting, I would say in general, less frequent. They used to be far more common.
I'm talking not just pre pandemic, but 10 plus years ago. And clearly airlines have implemented new systems and are leaning on technology to root out these mistakes before they get published and go live and allow people to book them, especially the US Airlines. Yes. No question. That said. You know, we looked through our archives and looked at how many mistake fares that we found, and I think we were both pretty surprised.
So, you know, it goes from 2025. So far we have found and sent four mistake fares thus far. Hoping for a fifth, knock on wood, that we're gonna get there before the end of the year. And then there's been a couple of years since the pandemic with just one or two or three mistake fares. And then in 2020, I honestly couldn't believe this.
We technically sent nine mistake fares, which I just want to get back to your previous question. This is the rub is sometimes it is truly difficult to say whether something was a mistake fare, or whether it's just a really good deal, and in the case of 2020, airlines just lost their minds and were desperate to fill seats.
And they did crazy things like selling. Atlanta to Santiago, Chile for $63 round trip. I genuinely don't think that that was a mistake. I think that was a published fare that on this, on a flight that was completely empty at the time, as we got towards the end of 2020, looking into 2021. So sometimes it's, it's kind of hard to say.
It's. Figuring out what's a mistake, fare and what's not, and what's just a really good deal in many cases is a lot more art than science. But I'm still a little bit surprised that they are more frequent than we probably thought.
Yeah, I was actually very surprised to see it. How frequently we actually have found them over the last few years, especially, I mean, four already this year by October is really crazy.
And giving people a lot of good examples. We didn't actually even touch on it. What can you tell me about this latest mistake there? What did we find and kind what, what sparked this whole discussion in our minds?
Well, you know, we've been circling this episode for a while because I think we wanted a.
A semi recent mistake fare to talk about. So we could do this kind of autopsy as you called it. And, and in this case it was a British Airways and to a lesser extent American Airlines business class fare from a couple of US hubs over to Europe, over to London and back for you know, what, $1,300 round trip total.
So, certainly not the cheapest one on the list, but. That's typically at least $4,000 round trip. So immediately that sets off the question like, is this real? And so in looking at the fare composition of this, we saw that when the, those tickets on that exact, on those exact same routes were selling at the normal price of $4,000, there was a $2,000 fuel surcharge attached to that.
That was part of the fare breakdown when it was selling for like $1,300. That $2,000 fuel surcharge was nowhere to be found, and in this case, it was only bookable at this lower $1,300 price by going through Alaska air.com. If you went to British Airways directly, if you went to American Airlines, if you clicked through Google Flights to any of these sites, you would've seen a significantly higher fare, which means, and kind of reinforces one of the most frequent elements that where we're seeing mistake fares recently is that.
It involves partner airlines, A partner airline may goof and just somehow file a fare on behalf of one of their partners that misses one of these core elements of the final price. And that's exactly what we saw here.
Yeah. It's kind of more and more common that that's the way that these mistake fares pop up.
All right. I want to take people inside. The Thrifty Traveler offices, our, our Thrifty Traveler systems on mistake fare day. And you know, to me, when there is a mistake fare, that we find, we alert everybody and we all start scrambling to figure out what it is and how to best, you know, send it to our members and analyze it for, you know, thrifty traveler readers.
And eventually this year. Podcast. But you know, to me when mistake fares happen, it feels like a really hectic episode of the West Wing. Like very Aaron Sorkin, like walk and talk. Everyone's got physical papers in their hands. There's a lot of shuffling and running and yelling and like newsroom style, crosstalk, when in reality we're, we're all just click clacking at our little keyboards next to each other, but not as much
Printed
papers involved in the mistake fare process these days.
No, I like to keep a stack of printed papers just so I could ruffle them. Heavily ruffle them at people to let them know that it's urgent, but it always feels big and, and important to us. But tell us a little bit about what the mistake fare process is like for Thrifty Traveler.
Well, we should really have John or Peter, Katie in here with us.
I wish they were, 'cause they know it better than anybody. I mean, first it starts with. We see the deal and in some cases we find it ourselves. In other cases, something crops up on a forum like flyer talk where people share, one of these amazing deals and people start talking about whether or not they can book them.
And then, you know, we have internally on our team. A dedicated slack channel that is devoted to mistake fares and unicorn alerts, kind of the super rare deals that might not be a mistake fare, but an amazing points deal that we may not typically see. And we start talking like, is this real? Is this a mistake?
Fare? What do we do? We start looking at the fare composition. Maybe most importantly, one of the most critical aspects of this process when we were trying to put together one of these text alerts and then emails, is we actually book it ourselves. 'cause the last thing that we want to do is send out a deal that isn't actually bookable, because I mean, the number of times over the years, despite, you know, sending nine of these deals in 2020 and four so far in 2025.
The number of times when we've seen an amazing price and thought, this is probably a mistake, fare. We should send this to our members only to try to book it and have that error out because the inventory has already been pulled, or it's just not a real available deal in general. I mean, those numbers would be significantly higher.
So that's just a really key part of this process.
We have a a whole document that outlines our systems for. For getting these mistake fares out to our members and in front of people. And the first thing on there is make sure it's bookable. 'cause if it's not bookable, then what do we then there's no point in doing this.
Right, right. And, you know, so for that air France Point steal that I mentioned at the top of the segment, I mean, that was one where we. A handful of us booked those A, because we're selfish and we wanted to, to fly to Croatia for 13,000 points in business class, but B, more seriously because it's like, this is too good to be true for, in that instance, a.
Points. Mistake fare was more or less unprecedented, so we had to check it out.
Yeah, so a little more behind the scenes here. What we do on the premium side, when we're sending the flight deals to everybody is one, when we find the fare, it's usually between two cities. But then we start digging in and looking around to see is this bigger?
Like where's this mistake, you know, happening to and from and, and can we get as many cities involved in this as we can? All the while we're usually putting together this text message alert, which precedes our flight deal alert. So we send our members a text message just to alert them like, Hey. You have a mistake fare sitting in your inbox, it's time to go look and book because time is really of the essence when it comes to mistake fares
159 characters to try to capture the enormity of a $1,300 business class fare to London.
It's, it can be difficult to thread that needle and give people enough information, but look, every second matters with these things, and this is such a rush. This like the, the days when mistake fares crop up are some of the funnest days in the office, especially when we're actually working together in person and we get to, you know, look at each other's computer screens.
Oh my gosh, did you see this? Okay. Go back and, you know, you start drafting the text and I'll book a dummy deal to make sure that this is actually bookable. It's just, it's so much fun. Yeah,
it is. It's that old newsroom rush that you and I are. Still seeking after all these years of being failed out of newsrooms ourselves.
Speak for yourself. Okay? So if you happen upon a mistake, Farrah, we alert you to one. If you're a traveler out there. What's, what should you do when you see a mistake? Fare
book. Now, ask questions later. You know, e even in my case where, you know, I, I texted my wife and asked, do you want to go to Vietnam in business class for $560 round trip?
You have five or 10 minutes to respond. That's probably too long. I probably should have either just booked it for her or just, you know, moved on very quickly because seconds can literally matter if hemming and hawing and waiting for a vacation request to be approved and trying to coordinate with one or two or three friends about, do you want to go to Europe in business class for $900 round trip?
You can't waste that kind of time because airlines can and do poll these fares in some cases within minutes. I mean, you know, I think back to. Some of these mistake fares that we've, we've sent over the years, some of them are gone in 30 minutes or less. From the time we can actually get an email out into members inboxes, which means time is of the essence.
Book it now then start to figure those things out. And remember, as long as your flight touches US soil, you have the 24 hour rule, which means you have a 24 hour window. In some cases, more. Some cases it's until 11:59 PM. For the airline that the following day, so it might be more like 36 hours depending on when this, when you actually book this fare.
But you have time to start to see if you can fit the pieces together. Can you get the time off work? Can that friend that you booked it for actually come with you and then Venmo you for the ticket cost? And if that's not gonna work, you cancel it. And you get a full refund.
That's the key is using the 24 hour rule.
Just book right away, you know, using a credit card so you're protected. And then make sure that you get some details down in that first 24 hours. But that leads me, Kyle, to one thing I wanted to note. We noted what are the best practices of booking a mistake? Fare? One of the things that's really important is what you should not do after booking a mistake.
Fare? And that is. Booking other non-refundable travel things around that mistake. Fare. Because these things don't always get honored, right?
You gotta be really impulsive to book it, and then after that, you immediately have to be very patient. It's one of the, the great ironies of mistake fares is that yes, you, you never know airlines.
Are unfortunately well within their rights to cancel fares that they can make a case were, were offered mistakenly at a low price. And you know, I think fortunately that has become pretty rare, I would say over the years. Most of the mistake fares we see get honored, but there's always that risk, right?
And so you need to just hold off. I mean, you can certainly book a, a hotel reservation that you're booking with points or you know, at a, and obviously not a prepaid rate, but you know, a stay in advance that can be canceled within a few days before you get there in case something gets in case your airfare gets canceled.
But you know, the big stuff, you know, especially if you're trying to go to Europe and go on a cruise and book a prepaid cruise reservation, you have to wait. Yeah.
Okay. So I know in terms of whether these things are honored or not, I know we've seen some cases like that. Those Air France tickets that were not honored, air France came out and said, we're really sorry, but this was a huge error and this would be a horrible loss for us to take.
So we have to cancel these. And I remember at the time the, the head of Air France was even talking about helping people get points back into their. Chase accounts and Capital One accounts and things like that to help people who transferred points get those points back. And then in some cases like that, Hong Kong Airlines one you're talking about, they right after the mistake fare, they tweeted something like, oops, have fun everybody.
I hope you enjoy our product for $500. So I guess how often would. Should a traveler expect either one of those two outcomes?
Well, before, before that, I just wanna point out that that was great that Hong Kong Airlines did that, and then like not even two full years later, they stopped flying long haul to the United States.
And whether there's causality there, I don't know, but it's just very kind of funny to me. I don't know. I don't know that there, there's a clear answer. I was, I will say for the most part. Airlines view this as a goodwill PR move to honor these fares when they do screw up. And so we see, I would say, you know, again, mistake fares are, generally speaking still quite rare.
But it's even rarer that a mistake fare does get canceled. I mean, that Air France Point steal from a couple years ago is one of the few within the last five years that has been canceled. Now, a piece of this again is what's a mistake? Fare, and what's just a good deal where we feel like it could be a mistake?
But we don't know, and those fares obviously aren't gonna get canceled. So there's definitely a lot of, of those types of just amazing deals that don't truly rise to the level of a mistake that are being honored because they were always going to be honored. You just, again, you have to be impulsive to book these things when you see 'em and you think you can make it work.
And then you need to be patient and hope for the best. The general guidance that we give people is. I wait about 10 to 14 days. I will say the, the mistake fares that have been canceled within the last decade, that tends to happen within more like three or four days, typically even less. But it's, it's much better to be safe, safe than sorry, on these things.
Yeah. Well, that's good. That's a good discussion on mistake fares. I'm jealous that you got to book that one. I've never booked one. Oh, someday, someday I'll be, I'll be here and ready. I have the best opportunity of perhaps anyone in the world to book one working for Thrift Traveler Premium. So I have no excuse for not doing it yet, but I'm waiting.
You've been here for more than four years and you haven't booked a mistake there. I think I would be well within my rights to fire you on air.
Just add it to the list of my next review. My next review is gonna be a doozy if you're taking notes on this podcast.
Oh, it's a blood bath. My notes are pages long now, can I spring a question on you that we didn't prepare for please?
There has always been a big debate about calling things a mistake. Fare. And that in doing so, you may be, we may be playing into the airline's hands of giving them evidence to say, oh, see, look, this was a mistake. This website says so, or This service says so and therefore we can and should cancel this ticket and the US government is going to allow us to do that because they have been given the bandwidth to make those kinds of decisions.
So how do you feel about. M calling things a mistake versus this is just a really good deal.
Yeah, I guess I, I think, you know, we've, we've started, we use this. This phrase mistake. Fare in part because we want to show people how fleeting it is and how quickly they need to move. And we always use the lightning bolt emoji, and this is all very on purpose, and we send them text alerts because it's all very on purpose.
You need to get onto the website and book this right now. So in terms of us creating a sense of urgency with the phrase mistake fare, I think that's why we do it. I don't know. Should, should we move away to, something else and just call all of these unicorns or call them all something else. I, I just don't, I don't know if the airlines are gonna be sending you know, sending the government to.
A Thrifty Traveler blog saying, Hey, this, they called this a mistake fare. So this is a mistake, right? I, I don't know if the government would probably consider us the authority on it, but in any event, like you said, these things are honored a lot at the time. So, you know, if if they wanted to do this, they could be already I'd hate for us to ruin someone's best deal of the year.
But yeah, I don't know. I, I think mistake fare still just does the job most of the time and.
I'm fine with how we use it. I agree. I, I think there's a tendency to like overplay the importance of sites and services like ours and how much they truly do move the needle. I think to your point, the urgency is the most important thing, the urgency to book it, and then the caution to not do anything else until we're sure that this is gonna get honored and, you know, to your point.
These things, generally speaking, have been honored. And so that, that to me takes off a lot of the pressure to be cautious on our part about labeling things a mistake. Fare. When, you know, the track record, at least for the last five years has been, you know, north of 90% I would say. Especially because, you know, let's say we've found 15 mistake fares in the last five years, which is generally speaking the right number.
How many of those were actually a mistake? I don't know that we can say for sure. But it's probably closer to five than it is to 10, let alone 15. And so if by labeling things a mistake fare gives people the kick up, the, you know what, that they need to be decisive and book this and then wait to start to plan their trip to make sure everything is gonna work.
I think that's, that's the job.
Yeah. All right, well here's to the next mistake. Fare. Hopefully I book it and hopefully you all out there get to book it as well. Let's move on to our listener question of the week, but before we take a question, Kyle, I need to recognize a listener that just.
Gets it. You know, if you would've asked me five days ago, do I love all of our listeners equally, I would've said yes.
But that is no longer the case because my guy, William Burton, after we sent the mistake fare alert to our members a few weeks ago, we got a reply from this guy, William Burton, and William said. Wasn't planning on getting a little booksy this morning, but now we are. Thank you, William. You using the word that I created, that Kyle loathes booksy in an, in an email to us just warmed my heart in incredible ways.
Tears to my eyes during the workday because of you, William Burton. So thank you so much. The, the word booksy is, is alive and well, and I'm just so proud that we're creating real culture out there in the world. Kyle, with this
show. Why would you do this, William? Don't give gunner a w on these things.
You've just empowered him to try and make nuts and bolts. This thing a thing.
William, I can't wait for your next email, man. I'm, I'm waiting with bated breath. Alright, let's take an actual question. It's a really fun one. At that listener Daniel Paul wrote to us, he said, love your podcast, find it very interesting and educational.
My wife now asks me, did you hear that on Thrifty Traveler? I need your help and I hope you can answer. I have an upcoming $100,000 spend for construction on my house. I can put it on a card or cards. My P two, his wife is a wide open canvas which is a hilarious way to refer to your wife. He said, what cards should I go after with her to maximize the travel benefits?
So I'll paraphrase here. He says he has. Many, many points, hundreds of thousands of points with Chase Capital One and Amex. So it's not about filling out one Points account or another, he simply just wants to know what kind of points he should earn with a hundred thousand dollars in spend. He said, any recommendation on cards to get to supplement what we have already?
Kyle I think whatever advice you give is probably useful to travelers. Whether they want, whether they have a hundred thousand dollars that they're putting on their house or $10,000 or a thousand dollars daycare bill or whatever. I think this is still good advice 'cause you can kind of chunk it up into however much you actually spend.
But what do you think about spending a hundred thousand dollars?
That is a golden opportunity. So thank you for, for reaching out with this. I'm a little bit jealous. I think. You need to determine first how far you want to or can go with this. You can split this up into, you know, a handful of different payments and, you know, rack up a couple of different bonuses.
All that said though, I mean, you know, if you're sitting on a really healthy. A stash of points in many different pots of programs. It's also not the worst idea in the world to just consider cashback guard as long as the return is gonna be strong enough to, you know, set aside some money for your travels in addition to the points that you already have.
The other two things that come to mind for me are there's a card that we haven't talked about a whole lot because Built tends to get the most attention when it comes to rent and soon paying mortgage. But there is another credit card on the market called the Mesa Card, which earns earns points on your mortgage.
You have to spend a certain amount of money each month in order to be eligible for that. But if you can split this up into several different payments on a Mesa card, you can earn points on your mortgage payments using the MESA card going forward. And also. Earn three x points on general contractors, any contractors that you may need to pay.
And so if this is a, I mean it's a hundred thousand dollars renovation, there's probably a handful of contractors they may charge you, they probably will charge you a fee, but that could be worth it to a, earn three x points on those purchases that you're making for these contractors. And B, unlock the ability to pay for your mortgage and earn points as well.
And then otherwise. You know, if your points balances are are pretty good, you know, think about, well, how can I get something additional out of this? So, for example, you know, if you spend $75,000 a year on an Amex Platinum card, you unlock free guest access at Centurion lounges. If you live in an airport like a.
Atlanta or Dallas or JFK or you know, go down the list where you can and do use a Centurion lounge frequently. That could be worth, it could also be worth it to spend it on a Delta Reserve card and really work your way towards Delta status and also. Unlock unlimited Delta Sky Club access if you live in a major Delta hub.
So there's, there's a lot of different paths to go down.
Yeah, I was thinking, one of my initial thoughts was because you have so many flexible points already, maybe just go try and get yourself some status on a few different airlines. Even. Go put some of this on a Delta reserve. Go put some of it on a AA executive platinum card.
Go try and get yourself as high status with a couple airlines that you know you're gonna fly over the next year and a half or so. And do that. Otherwise, the business Platinum card from American Express earns two x on construction materials. So you can plump up that account there if you want, or the most fun way cash in a manila envelope, just 'cause I've, I've never seen a hundred thousand dollars in cash before and I probably never will.
So, you know, you're missing out on some rewards, but have you ever held a hundred thousand dollars in cash in your hands before? I don't know. Could be a good opportunity. Might be the only one. Okay. I hope we helped Daniel. Thank you so much for reaching out. If you want us to feature your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
And your question might be featured in next week's show. It's time for on the spot and it's Kyle's question to me,
how does it feel to be working your last day at Thrifty Traveler? No. Nope, that's not it. Okay. To put you on the spot, gunner, you haven't booked a mistake. Fare. But what. Other, you know, maybe it's a mistake.
Fare. Maybe it's something you tried to book and it failed and it didn't work. What's the deal that got away?
Oh, the
deal that got away.
Well I booked Q Suites for my honeymoon and then they product changed me. So I was, I
don't think that counts. You did take the Qatar? I did
take the flight. I did take the flight.
Let me see, I, I, I mean, I've had a few man, I. The deal that got away.
The gears are turning. So many opportunities missed.
Yeah, it's always been like, you know, I, I get hung up. Right before I'm about to book or just the points just aren't quite there or something like that. I don't know if I have like a perfect example of the deal that got away.
I, I think there's been several, well, last year I was supposed to fly Austrian business class to go to Vienna and they canceled that flight the morning of. I ended up taking Polaris, which was probably a better flight, but I really wanted to fly Austrian because I was, you know, just hoping to see what that product was like to go skiing for a few days.
So that one got away from me, I guess, but I don't know, I don't have that like big monster deal that got away. I think I've had pretty good luck booking the things that I need to book.
So, that's a really bad answer. I'm sorry you, you failed the assignment. Well,
I've had, it's, none of it has been my fault.
It's always the airline's fault. I am, you know, a perfect traveler, as we all know. Never made a mistake. So I've, you know, I don't miss out on a lot of good trips. Good for you. Thanks, Kyle. All right. That's enough. Thank you so much for listening to the Thrift Traveler Podcast. Rate us five stars on your platform of choice, please, and like, and subscribe to the show on YouTube.
Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation booked on a mistake. Fare. If you have any feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. I'd love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team.
This episode was produced by your favorite host, who is not a perfect traveler, gunner Olson, who's produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas.
Our theme music is by Benjamin Teso. See you next week.
See ya.