
Airline error leads to huge discount on first- and business-class tickets
CBSN
Finding great deals on airfare isn't so unusual in the internet age, but some bargains really are too good to be true.
Take the travelers who scored sharply discounted tickets for international flights on All Nippon Airways. Because of a currency conversion error, the tickets went on sale for up to nearly 20 times less than their face values, according to Bloomberg. Passengers were able to get business-class tickets for flights traveling between North America and Asia for between $300 and $550 — more than $9,000 off their original cost, the news service reported.
One traveler even locked down a first-class flight from Jakarta, Indonesia, to the Caribbean, with layovers in Tokyo and New York, for $890. The problem stemmed from a glitch on ANA's Vietnam website, which listed an incorrect currency conversion, the company told Bloomberg. The airline added it is "investigating the cause of the bug and the size of its damage."

In the past year, over 135 million passengers traveled to the U.S. from other countries. To infectious disease experts, that represents 135 million chances for an outbreak to begin. To identify and stop the next potential pandemic, government disease detectives have been discreetly searching for viral pathogens in wastewater from airplanes. Experts are worried that these efforts may not be enough.