Marcus Webb
In 2014, when I wrote my post on 2018’s Mistake Fares Playbook, mistake fares (or as some like to call them, error fares) happened with almost monthly regularity. While they would get published by the airlines and then, usually within hours, would get cancelled. In the last year or so, there have been fewer of these events and they’ve been cancelled more aggressively and with greater finality earlier on. Rules have changed too, enough so that the 2018 advice is already failing to provide any utility for 2018 fares. However, there is enough that has remained constant that it still remains to be very valuable to know. As I said, I’ve scored 5 of these already this year. The most recent one, scored just last week, was a Boston to Vienna in Lufthansa’s business class for $467 that should have been around $4,000. (It actually was honored by the airline). So here’s the 2026 updated edition.
Most error fares occur because of a mispriced fuel surcharge, or an incorrectly converted currency, or simply because the airline’s routing system has ignored the connecting flight connecting penalty and quoted a direct fare. (Business class transatlantic error fares in the $400s for example). These prices look very cheap indeed. Round the world economy error fares in the $250s from Europe to Asia for example, look as though they cannot possibly be correct.
Where to look for the fares in 2026. The mass email lists that many travel blogs often reference are, unfortunately, still too slow for alerting on low fares. By the time the emails are sent, the mistake fares have usually already been pulled by the airlines. I have found that connecting with other travelers on specific Reddit threads (r/awardtravel, in particular, has the best thread for finding mistakes), connecting on FlyerTalk with other travelers regarding specific airlines, and following a select group of people on Telegram that monitor for low fare sales on travel booking sites in real time, within minutes of publication, are often the only ways to book the cheaper fares before they are removed from the booking engines’ sites. Most mistake fares are discovered and booked within the first 30 minutes after which the error is published, though some do last longer, typically under two hours.
You mentioned booking “refundable fares.” When booking a mistake fares, remember that the ticket must be refundable in the event that the fare is pulled. This typically means you will book a fare that is marked as fully refundable and which can be cancelled at any time until the ticket is issued. It’s also helpful to pay for your mistake fare with a credit card which can be easily disputed through if the airline is not willing to honor the fare. Also, be careful not to book any additional travel products (i.e. flights on other airlines, hotel reservations, rental cars, etc.) until the record locator (issued by the airline when you book your mistake fare) can be verified by searching for your flight on the airline’s website.
Three signs a fare will not be honored. The airline issues a press statement within hours of the price publication. The ticket sits “pending” for longer than 72 hours. The routing requires connections in airports the airline does not normally codeshare into. In these cases, bail means you cancel the trip plan without booking onward arrangements, not that you cancel the ticket itself. Let the airline cancel and refund. Cancelling yourself can trigger a partial penalty.
To date, I have set up two Telegram channels (one of which is active only during certain times of the year), am registered for one Reddit thread on Reddit (awardtravel), have a credit card that has $5,000 worth of available credit (which is plenty to cover mistake fares in economy) and a current passport. Then, I am always willing to take a flight to a ‘new’ airport and willing to add as much as 14 hours to a trip in order to complete a connecting flight on an airline. For me, the fare is the ticket and the flights that one can arrange to take in order to utilize said ticket are the trip. (Note: this does not mean to book flights for connecting air on the same booking as the mistake fare. Rather, if the mistake fare is pulled, you can still ‘lose’ nothing as you were planning a trip to use the initially found fare in the first place).
In November 2024 I got a great mistake fare Lufthansa business class business fare BOS to VIE for $467 which was about $4,000 below the normal fare. Lufthansa honored the fare and I flew on it in February. In March 2025 I also got a mistake fare on Qatar. The fare was for a Bangkok to Cape Town economy round trip ticket for $189 which normally would be around $800. The problem was that the fare was canceled in 6 hours. Since I hadn’t booked any hotel reservations yet I wasn’t out any money. I had just spent some time reviewing a number of safari tour operators. Based on my past experience this type of fare gets honored about 1 in 5 times.
There are two things I always get asked about when it comes to these mistake fares: 1. Book a mistake fare when you have no intention of going on the trip (and have not booked for others to go on your behalf). I say, yes, provided the ticket is fully refundable, until the point where losing the full value of said ticket would be a financial hardship on you. 2. When should you inform your traveling friends and family that you’ve found a very cheap error fare for a trip that you were also considering for them? Only after you’ve booked it yourself. A fare can die quickly if booking engine software detects a ‘spike’ in attempts to book that fare.
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