Thousands of people were scrambling to book tickets with El Al Airlines to Israel, Monday morning, after tickets appeared online for less than $400 round-trip. The tickets appeared on Orbitz, Fly.com and other online ticketing outlets – as well as private travel agents.
The deal was also posted on “Dan’s Deals”, a popular daily deal website.
The link was being emailed around, and spread like wildfire all morning. YWN received close to 100 emails asking us to publish the link for people to jump on the cheap fare.
YWN immediately reached out to our contacts at El Al, and were informed that there was a serious error taking place, and asked that we not publish the link until further investigation by El Al officials took place.
Later this afternoon, Sheryl Stein, from the Public Relations Division of El Al, explained to YWN what had taken place.
EL AL had submitted winter promotional fares correctly to an outside company which is responsible for filing airfares for many airlines. That company posted incorrect EL AL fares on several travel web sites. On a daily basis, any published airfare consists of the basic fare, a fuel surcharge and taxes. In this situation, the fuel surcharge was omitted.
Stein says that the error was the outside companies fault and not El Al.
She added that El Al still has no idea exactly how many tickets were sold at the incorrect rates, and it was still unknown if not El Al would honor the tickets.
(Dov Gordon – YWN)
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13 Responses
I believe according to the law, they have to honor the tickets. If they don’t “have” to & they choose not to, they are fools.
Not a “glitch”, but a true nais allowing many of us to visit Eretz Yisrael who otherwise couldn’t afford the trip.
according to El Al, they are honoring all the tickets.
I bought 3 tickets on cheaptickets.com. ElAl told me that they will honor them.
Elal confirmed that they will be honoring the tickets.
Is it Mekach Taos being that they are Yidden?
I am curious if Halachacally one can capitalize on an error not even made by ElAL. Is it yashrus ? ELAL obviously did not want this to happen and an outside company made the mistake. Anyone have any clue how this would play out in Choishen Mishpat?
As of now (9:30 PM) Elal has yet to notify my friend (that bought a ticket on Oritz) that his ticket is not being honored or refunded.
El Al confirmed that they would be honoring todays sales.
Having bought tickets through expedia today, I wonder if they are mutar to use. El Al is a Jewish company. Is this considered a ta’us akum because of the outside company involved? Is there ona’ah? Does bitul mekach apply if El Al doesn’t claim it? Perhaps YWN could pose these questions to a choshen mishpat posek and provide a follow up article. Most websites allow cancelling the ticket until tomorrow night. Hence, if the tickets are ossur to use, people could easily get their money back.
“YWN immediately reached out to our contacts at El Al, and were informed that there was a serious error taking place, and asked that we not publish the link until further investigation by El Al officials took place.”
Are you kidding me??!! Why on earth would you do that??!! As has been mentioned on DansDeals.com many times, rule number one of a deal like this is: NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER call the airline or hotel!!!! You killed the deal for everyone else, thousands of people who could’ve had an affordable trip to Israel!!!
Taaos yisrael is asur, only taaos akum is mutar. Also the sale is batel since it is onaah of more than a sixth less of the going rate for the ticket.
if you think their is a sheilah go ask a rav do not paskin for everyone because you think this is the halacha