3. A typo on plane tickets
$7.2 million
Next time you feel embarrassed about making a typo, be grateful that at least it didn’t cost you over $7 million dollars in cash, like the now defunct airline Alitalia. In 2006, Italy’s then largest airline advertised long haul flights in business class from Toronto to Cyprus at a too good to be true cost of just $39!
As you might expect, travellers rushed to book their seats on the ultra-cheap flights but it turned out someone at the company had made a listing error – as the journey was supposed to cost $3900. The company immediately tried to refund the cost of the cheap tickets, but were faced by a slew of complaints, so, to try and save face, they had to let customers fly who’d already booked.
As a result of their PR efforts, they wound up out of pocket to the tune of $7.2 million dollars, and while we don’t think this doozy necessarily contributed to the company’s 2021 closure, it’s still a lot of money to lose because of a couple of missed off zeros.
