2 Hours Too Late

You have probably already heard about the glitch in Delta Airlines' booking system that happened on the morning of Boxing Day. But if you haven't, it's worth the read. It's a travel junkie's dream come true. It's like winning the lotto.  (Search "Delta Glitch" and you will find lots to read.)

#Deltaglitch also became its own trending hashtag pretty quickly.

Some people booked first class tickets to Hawaii for $86 round trip, all fees included. Other domestic fares reported as low as $20.

It seems that for 2 hours prices on an incredible number of routes were accidentally reduced to mere pennies on the dollar. By the time I heard about it, there were only traces left, but no deals. You could search and find the deals (like through Expedia.com) but once you selected to purchase, the updated prices were revealed. Delta took the drastic step of taking their own website offline in order to fix the error.

Look at these screen shots form my Expedia search. It's enough to make you salivate, isn't it?

Such programming errors have happened before with other airlines. With precedent set, Delta really had no choice but to honour all the fares booked at these rock bottom prices.  In the days to come, some may argue that it was a brilliant and well timed (Boxing Day) marketing ploy, but I would argue that simply would be some clever after-thought marketing to cover up what was likely just a "little" human error.

Regardless, Delta just bought a whole bunch of publicity (with the error), and a whole bunch of good will (by honouring purchased fares).

I would also bet big money that Delta.com will see their web traffic counts skyrocket at bargain hunters troll the site into the foreseeable future looking for any deal that resemble the Great Delta Glitch of Christmas 2013.

See the price Delta was offering, as compared
to what you would consider a normal price.

Look at the bottom corner for the price change!
Ah, what could have been!!!

Expedia just taunting us with what could have been!