Airline error in your favour, collect Cyprus tickets

Donnie Bowers of New Haven didn't quite believe it when he saw round trip tickets from Toronto to Cyprus for $33 US, but he bought the tickets anyway.

"I didn't even know where Cyprus was," says Bowers.

"I looked at the regular price and I thought, wow, this is something to really get involved in."

The regular price for a Toronto-Cyprus ticket on the Italian airline Alitalia is $3,900, but a clerical error on the reservation system caused the last two zeros in the air fare to be dropped. Given the exchange rate on the day, that came to $33 US.

The error was quickly detected, but not before 509 people had made the purchase. The airline has decided to honour the discount ticket price for those people.

Bowers received his tickets Tuesday night.

"You scour the web from time to time for a deal whenever you decide to buy something," he says.

"The way it works when you buy something online with your credit card, you're pretty safe to get your money back if things don't work out. Why not roll the dice and see what happens?"

In this case, what happens is Bowers is flying to Cyprus in October.