Every once in a while, your feed will light up with headlines about an unbelievable flight deal. Maybe it’s a transatlantic business class ticket for a few hundred dollars or a cross-country trip for less than the price of dinner. These deals usually fall into one of two categories: a planned fare sale, or the much rarer mistake fare.
While I see these headlines. I let them go—the same as I have done for all of the mistake fares I’ve seen before.
While there are a group of people who live to book mistake fares, I don’t fall into that category for several reasons.
What’s a Mistake Fare vs. a Fare Sale?
Before diving into why I don’t chase them, it’s worth clarifying the difference:
- Mistake Fare: An accidental price—caused by a typo, technical glitch, or miscalculated taxes and fees. These can vanish within hours, but sometimes result in unbelievably cheap flights if you book fast enough.
- Fare Sale: A planned promotion from an airline or booking site. These are intentional, widely available, and usually last a few days or weeks.
Both can save you money, but only mistake fares are accidental, unpredictable, and truly once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities.
I Have To Plan Vacation Time In Advance
My day job requires me to request my vacation in advance. I can’t do my job virtually and if I’m not there, someone has to cover for me. That requires planning and keeps me from making spontaneous bookings.
We Like To Travel Where We Want, Not To Where Flights Are Cheap
While mistake fares may be appealing to someone looking to explore, we prefer to visit places on our bucket list. Since we have a limited amount of vacation time, much of our travel is planned well in advance because of my previously mentioned day job.
Our Trips Are Already Accounted For
We usually have our trips mapped out well ahead of time—both shorter getaways and longer vacations. Even if I haven’t booked them yet, I know what plans we’re going to make if everything works out and what backup plans we’ll use if something goes sideways.
Where To Find Mistake Fares
If you’re the kind of traveler who lives for mistake fares, there are several good resources that can help you catch them quickly:
Deals like this often disappear within hours, so the key is to act quickly—book first, think later. But don’t make any nonrefundable plans until you know the airline will honor your ticket.
Do Airlines Have To Honor Mistake Fares?
Once upon a time, if you managed to book a mistake fare, there was a good chance the airline would have to honor it. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) used to enforce strict rules that prevented airlines from canceling tickets after purchase, even if they claimed the fare was an error.
That changed in 2015, when the DOT revised its policy to give airlines more leeway. Today, if an airline can show that a fare was a genuine mistake, they’re allowed to cancel those reservations and issue refunds rather than flying passengers at the incorrect price. While some carriers may still choose to honor a mistake fare as a goodwill gesture or for publicity, many—especially U.S. airlines—lean on this policy to back out of deals they don’t want to keep.
For travelers, this means you can’t count on a mistake fare being “locked in” until your ticket is ticketed and, even then, it might not stick. It’s a gamble: sometimes you win, sometimes you get an apologetic cancellation email and a refund.
Final Thoughts
Over the years, I’ve spoken with many people who traveled around the world thanks to mistake fares. They went wherever the lowest fare took them, regardless of whether the destination had ever been on their radar. Some of them discovered places they might never have considered if not for that too-good-to-be-true ticket price.
I appreciate this because in my youth, we had to travel to several U.S. cities because of my father’s annual conventions. No matter if it was St. Paul, Memphis, or Tampa, we always found something worthwhile to do while visiting a city. That’s not the way we travel. We find a place we want to go and it’s my job to make that trip happen.
So this means I have to let mistake fares go—and I’m OK with that.
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