Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

How much!? British Airways glitch results in $4.2M quote for family vacation

There have been quite a few cases where website mishaps have enabled travelers to snap up airline seats at absurdly low prices, but here’s a story in which someone found themselves at the complete opposite end of the scale.

The peculiar tale began earlier this week when U.K.-based Debbie Andrioli hit British Airways’ website to book a vacation for her family of five, The Independent reported.

Recommended Videos

Ms. Andrioli’s desired destination was Mexico’s Riviera Maya, an idyllic spot on the country’s Caribbean coastline.

Having input the dates and other details, she hit the “continue” button to proceed with the reservation. But there was a bit of a snag. The website quoted her 636,000 British pounds (about $840,000) per person for the two-week trip, bringing the total cost to 3,178,612 pounds (about $4.2 million) for the entire family.

Sure, it included flights, accommodation, and other extras, but, as The Independent noted, it was still around 200 times more expensive than what you would ordinarily expect to pay for such a trip.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Andrioli decided to tweet British Airways’ boss, Alex Cruz, telling him she thought the quoted price was “a bit steep,” and asking, “Can we haggle?”

She told The Independent the prices quoted on B.A.’s website seemed “random,” adding that the $4.2 million quote was obviously the result of “a glitch on the system”

Responding to the bizarre error, a spokesperson for B.A. said: “We always want our customers to feel like a million dollars when they’re on holiday with us, but our holidays to Mexico start at 843 pounds per person, so nobody ever needs to pay that much.” Lucky she didn’t hit the “book” button, then.

As we mentioned at the top, airlines’ computer systems do occasionally spit out absurdly cheap flight tickets, with Cathay Pacific recently messing up not once, but twice in the space of just a couple of weeks when it accidentally sold $16,000 first-class seats for just $1,100. Luckily for those quick enough to make a booking, the Hong Kong-based airline agreed to honor the reservations.

It doesn’t always work out so well for quick-witted travelers, though. United Airlines, for example, canceled a number of first-class reservations in 2015 when a bug on its website caused the fares to display at way below the correct price.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How to change margins in Google Docs
Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content -- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Read more
What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.

Read more
Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs
A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.

For the last few decades, Microsoft Word has been the de facto standard for word processors across the working world. That's finally starting to shift, and it looks like one of Google's productivity apps is the heir apparent. The company's Google Docs solution (or to be specific, the integrated word processor) is cross-platform and interoperable, automatically syncs, is easily shareable, and perhaps best of all, is free.

However, using Google Docs proves it still has a long way to go before it can match all of Word's features -- Microsoft has been developing its word processor for over 30 years, after all, and millions still use Microsoft Word. Will Google Docs' low barrier to entry and cross-platform functionality win out? Let's break down each word processor in terms of features and capabilities to help you determine which is best for your needs.
How does each word processing program compare?
To put it lightly, Microsoft Word has an incredible advantage over Google Docs in terms of raw technical capability. From relatively humble beginnings in the 1980s, Microsoft has added new tools and options in each successive version. Most of the essential editing tools are available in Google Docs, but users who are used to Word will find it limited.

Read more