Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Aer Lingus has been accused of breaching its contracts with over 100 would-be passengers who booked €5 seats to the US. The airline cancelled the bookings from people who had booked business class return tickets to the US yesterday for nominal prices, saying that the low fares had been made available in error.

The tickets for flights to New York were made available for €5 on the Aer Lingus website at 7.30am yesterday. These tickets normally sell for €1,775 one-way.

The offer was withdrawn shortly after 9.10am and several hours later passengers who thought they had made reservations received emails from Aer Lingus saying that “due to a technical error in our reservation system a small number of bookings were priced incorrectly” and that the booking was cancelled.