=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/news/archive/2002/05/15/f= inancial1203EDT0121.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, May 15, 2002 (AP) United sells $5 roundtrip tickets because of computer goof (05-15) 09:28 PDT CHICAGO (AP) -- For some travelers, it's going to cost more to get to the airport than to fly. For about 45 minutes on Tuesday, United Airlines customers were able to buy roundtrip tickets to U.S. cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles for as little as $5 because of an error by a computer that distributes fares for major airlines. United will honor the tickets but did not yet know how many were bought = or the destinations, spokeswoman Chris Nardella said Wednesday. "We discovered the problem and we fixed it, but there was a 45-minute window when customers were able to book these tickets," she said. The fares varied depending on the route. But some customers booking trav= el through Chicago and Denver ended up paying only $5, Nardella said. The problem occurred when Airline Tariff Publishing Co., a clearinghouse for all airlines' fares, loaded new sale fares onto United's site that included a $5 discount for booking online. When some customers did not receive the discount, the company attempted to fix the problem, but wound up accidentally filing the fares as $5, Nardella said. The site stopped giving customers a promised $5 discount for booking online, and when workers tried to fix it, it began selling flights for as low as $5 instead, she said. It wasn't the first time United sold tickets cheap via the Internet. In January, 142 passengers bought tickets to international destinations for as little as $25. United first said it would not honor those fares -- also the result of a technical problem -- but later agreed to do so. And in August, 120 customers booked trips to Bombay from Chicago for $140 or $180. =20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 AP