Airlines can accidentally file the wrong fares. I should know, since I’ve personally done it twice. That’s fine, people make mistakes, but it’s the recovery that counts. The recovery from the latest mistake, Korean filing a sub-$500 fare from the US to Palau, is a great example of good intentions gone awry. Korean tried to do this right, but it simply waited too long.

You might think that all fare filing is a highly automated process, and much of it can be, but there is still plenty of opportunity for human error. In my days doing pricing at America West, I messed up twice.

The first was a web-only fare (back when airlines still did that) between Baltimore and Phoenix for less than $100 roundtrip. This was in the fairly early days of web booking, and we caught it quickly. I don’t think one seat was sold. With the other, I wasn’t so lucky.

I accidentally filed a $62 roundtrip fare between Indianapolis and Santa Barbara. I don’t remember which, but I had either left off the leading digit or the trailing digit. (Meaning it was supposed to be $462, or something like that, or $620.) A travel agent in Indiana found it and promptly told all his friends. We had sold a few dozen tickets before we found the error and fixed it. In the end, we honored the fare, but I always got ribbed for it.

Filing mistake fares is sort of a rite of passage. It wasn’t a matter of “if,” but “when” you would do it. I fortunately never filed the dreaded zero-dollar fare, but in a way, those are easier. Those are very clearly mistakes and you can probably get away without honoring them.

But for other mistakes, it’s more murky. The latest flub came from Korean Air. I only know about this because I received three different emails on the subject from people who were rightly furious with the way it was handled.

Back in September, Korean filed fares from the US to Palau for between $485 and $560 roundtrip all-in depending upon the origin city. This is clearly an unbelievable deal, and had to be a mistake (others say it’s plausible, but it’s really not). Korean had it out there for 3 or 4 days before they found it and pulled it. A FlyerTalk thread clearly had people warning that it was a mistake fare, but of course, everyone jumped on it with the hope that Korean would honor it. (I don’t blame them at all.)

Now, once an airline figures out it made a mistake, it pulls the fare and then decides whether to honor it or not. There is no set rule on how this should work, and every airline handles it differently. After the fare disappeared on September 6, people waited to see what would happen. Nothing happened, so the assumption was that the fare was being honored. People started booking hotels, making plans, etc.

Then, on November 7, two full months after the fare was purchased, Korean Air sent an email to everyone saying that the fare wouldn’t be honored. The process would be as follows:

Korean Air is offering affected customers a full refund of the fare paid, or the opportunity to purchase a ticket on the same itinerary at a fare equal to the lowest fare offered by Korean Air in the market, or the closest similar market, during the past year.

Korean Air also is reimbursing customers for expenses incurred as a result of having purchased the incorrect fare, such as cancellation fees for flights, hotels, ground transportation, and other arrangements.

In addition, Korean Air is offering those passengers a $200 travel voucher for a future flight to any Korean Air destination from a U.S. gateway.

Now, had Korean put this out the day after the fare was found, then it would probably be acceptable. Oh sure, some people think that airlines should honor a mistake fare no matter what, but to me this seems like it would have been a generous response. But doing it two months later is just ridiculous.

Sure, this means people won’t be out any money, but it fails to account for the fact that people made plans that can’t easily be replaced. Some people scheduled this as their trip over the holiday period. Others picked long weekends. There was one person that was even planning on leaving on November 16. This was canceled a mere 9 days before departure.

Now what do those people do? It will be significantly more expensive to plan a different vacation for the holidays, so people are effectively screwed out of having a real vacation during that time. Again, had Korean canceled this on September 7, then it wouldn’t be a big deal. But this is bad.

So what the heck happened? I’m told that the problem was that Korean wanted to do this right, and that means the airline did it wrong. See, the airline took so long not only discussing internally what to do but also checking with regulators to make sure they were following any laws that might exist, that by the time a decision was made, two months had passed. And that’s how they ended up in the predicament.

Remember that whole strategy from LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about airport regionalization? Well, it took yet another step backward yesterday with the recommendation of the Burbank airport authority to enact a hard curfew (via this excellent Airliners.net thread).

You can guess where this is coming from – the surrounding community. Thanks to their objections, the airport wants to prohibit any operations between 10p and 7a. Is that a horrible idea? Well, not entirely. We have one of those here in Long Beach, and it’s nice to have peace and quiet while we sleep. That being said, these are very different in that Burbank will have much stiffer fines. That’s bad news for travelers.

In Long Beach, airlines don’t pay a fine for violating the curfew until their third violation. At that point, they pay a whopping $100. Then each subsequent violation in a twelve month period will cost $300. (Read more) The Burbank fine, according to the Application (pdf), will cost $3,671 for the first fine, $7,342 for the second, $11,013 for the third, and $14,684 for the fourth over a twelve month period. If an airline has four violations, it’s banned from the airport for a year.

I know, you’re wondering what this has to do with you, right? Well, with penalties that steep, airlines will be less willing to schedule any flights near that curfew time at night for fear that they’ll miss it. Right now, there are a couple of flights scheduled to go before 7a and I think one after 10p. The night flights, even the ones before curfew, are most at risk, because if they’re delayed in the slightest, they won’t be able to land. Then early morning flights get in trouble because the plane that usually spends the night in Burbank ready to fly early the next day won’t be able to land until morning. That, of course, is dependent upon the airlines being willing to even schedule flights at those times with the potential penalties so high.

Probably even more annoying than having your flight not get out on time will be when you’re on a late arriving flight into Burbank. Let’s say you’re on the last flight from SFO and fog has delayed flights a couple hours. Well, that last flight would probably go if it were heading to Long Beach because the cost of violating the curfew isn’t prohibitively steep if it doesn’t happen often. (Honestly, it could rise some and still be ok.) At Burbank? Forget it. They’ll just park the plane or divert you to another airport instead. Great, huh?

My advice: If this curfew gets enacted, don’t fly into Burbank too close to the curfew. Fly to LAX instead. Not what the Mayor of LA had in mind, right? Well, he’s not exactly following his regionalization plan either. While Burbank is thumbing its nose at the that strategy, Mayor Villaraigosa is crowing about a new flight that he’s landed at LAX.

The new flight is on Korean Air. The airline will now fly from LAX to Sao Paulo, presumably as an extension of one of the daily Seoul/Incheon flights. Asian carriers that want access to the largest city in South America can’t fly nonstop (range problems) so they need to find a place to go first. JAL used to fly via LAX (I actually took the flight once), but now they go through JFK. So, Korean will now pick up the slack and try to make a go of it.

Now, Mayor Villaraigosa claims in the city’s press release that the flights are “a direct result of the Mayor’s 2006 trade mission to Asia.” Um, right. I really hope the airline isn’t sitting around saying, “Gee, you know I like that guy. How cool was it that he came to visit us? We should start a flight to Brazil from his city.”

So, what are the takeaways here?

• If Burbank enacts this curfew, don’t book a flight arriving there near the curfew for fear you may not get there in time
• If you’re flying to Sao Paulo from LA, congrats. You now have a nonstop option.
• Regionalization isn’t as easy as you (or the Mayor) might think