Error fare: An online travel agency in Argentina sold tickets to Europe and US for two cents

An error in the system of the online travel agency eDreams caused this morning that tickets to Europe, the United States and the Caribbean were sold in Argentina starting at ARS 4.72, which represents about USD 0.02 considering the parallel quotation of the Argentine peso against the dollar.

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Although this type of errors in airlines or online travel agencies have been recurrent over the years, such a low value of two cents in dollars has very few precedents in the world.

C5N journalist Mauro Albornoz was the one who made this error known, and a tide of people rushed to buy tickets.

⭕️Hay un error con la web Edreams y se vendieron pasajes a Europa o EEUU por 4 o 10 pesos. pic.twitter.com/CGcnHGsPub

— Mauro Albornoz (@Mau_Albornoz) May 16, 2022

Some users replied that they bought tickets and they were confirmed and issued without any inconvenience. This is the case of @marzubillaga9, who said he was able to buy tickets to Barcelona for ARS 9 (0.04), while user @ediminuttorouan bought two flights to Rome and Paris for ARS 3.40 (0.017).

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Another user was willing to pay more and got tickets to Copenhagen for ARS 18 (USD 0.09). Another user said he quoted five tickets to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for ARS 80 (USD 0.40), but closed the page «because he didn’t understand why it was so cheap».

By Monday afternoon, the eDreams site was inaccessible and later, when it was reinstated, tickets were available at normal prices (averaging USD 1,000).

Now, those who were able to issue their transatlantic tickets at two cents on the dollar will have to cross their fingers that eDreams will either recognize them or end up claiming that the fares were obviously erroneous and that there was bad faith on the part of those who took advantage of it. There are antecedents of both cases.