Jetstar's trillion-dollar airfares a shocker

Photo / Greg Bowker

Customers booking international flights on the cut-price airline Jetstar have been shocked by some sky-high fares - one customer's flight was quoted at more than $1.3 trillion.

The airline yesterday said a computer glitch had led to the inflated prices and apologised to anyone surprised to find such costly fares.

One booking summary sent to the Herald showed a return ticket to Japan that would cost $1,324,930,000,000. The correct total was $1324.93.

The price of another passenger's return flights from Auckland to Sydney was $321,630,000,000 when it should have been $321.63.

Jetstar spokesman Simon Westaway said no one had paid the huge prices that appeared on the website's display page as customers booked their flights throughout Wednesday morning.

"It's a display issue only with customers' itineraries" and no credit cards were charged the erroneous sums.

"There should be no cause for any customer angst, because there was no overcharging."

He said the problem, which occurred when the company's website was upgraded on Tuesday night, caused an error in calculating flight prices that were not rounded dollar figures, affecting customers who booked international flights throughout Wednesday morning.

He described the situation as an "anomaly".

"There was a corrupt code. That was identified and it was recalibrated and most importantly all customers that did receive such a strange receipt itinerary were charged the fare they purchased and not charged that other amount.

"We believe it only affected a small number of bookings and we believe those were of an international nature.

"So from a New Zealand customer's perspective it was possible some transtasman bookings could have been affected.

"With any New Zealand domestic bookings there were no issues."

Asked how many customers were affected, Mr Westaway said: "We're still trying to get to the bottom of that. It was a small number - it could have been dozens but it was isolated to international bookings over a short period."

He said anyone with concerns over the glitch should contact the company's call centre.

Jetstar began its New Zealand operations in June, when the airline was troubled with complaints about its arrival times which require passengers to be at the airport at least an hour before flights depart.