UPDATE: YMMV (and certainly keep trying!), but it appears the deal is now dead – if you missed this one, you might be interested in how to get in on the next mega-deal – 5 steps to get you ready for the next mistake fare sale!
ANOTHER UPDATE (7:03pm EST) – Here is another post with the latest updates – it appears that United is going to (attempt to?) void these fares. There may still be some recourse via the US DOT however.
(UPDATE THE THIRD: The US DOT is NOT enforcing this United Mistake Fare Sale. Here is the final information including a link to the full DOT press release)
I first saw this on View from the Wing this morning, referencing the following FlyerTalk thread.
There is a mistake fare going on RIGHT NOW with flights from Europe to the US for about $150 roundtrip in FIRST class. It appears to only be leaving the United Kingdom, though there have been reports of other successful flights.
I booked 2 tickets for LHR-CVG-LHR on United.com, set my billing country to Denmark. 1122 Danish Kroner is $170, roundtrip – 2 tickets in first class.
You will want to use a card with no foreign transaction fees
If it’s dead by the time you read this, you can also check out 5 steps to get you ready for the next mistake fare sale!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
You get that this is fraud, right? And that writing it up on your blog shows that you are aware that you have done something fraudulent?
I disagree that this is fraud.
You intentionally put Denmark as your billing country in order to get a better price. How can that not be fraud?
I have no issue with using a website based in another country to get a better price, but when you have to misrepresent your billing address in order to get that price, I am pretty sure that is fraud.
I am not passing a moral judgment, I am just looking at what the legal implications might be. I have shopped on the Egypt based site of Egyptair to save on tickets and would happily have taken advantage of this “sale” as well if I could have done it using all of my correct information (believe me, I looked for anyplace that I could use my correct information, I had an awesome $15,000/person itinerary for each of 6 of us), so this is not a holier than thou comment, it is a comment on the legal ramifications of what you have done. While I doubt that United would go after every person who took advantage of this, I would be really concerned about doing it as a blogger and then writing about it. You might be just the kind of person that they would be looking to make an example of.
I make my living analyzing systems exactly like the application which exposed the error originally, and very often it is my responsibility to ensure the quality of the software that goes out the door. Reading about this “fare mistake” in that capacity is quite entertaining, and I’m guessing someone in the QA department of the “third-party software provider” is now without a job!
Obviously, that means I’m not a lawyer, but I do know companies have some amount of responsibility for quality and accuracy of the applications they make available for the sole purpose of conducting business transactions with consumers…which is exactly why girls like me have very lucrative jobs.
In my biz, we call this a production defect and it is the kiss of death – most often entirely avoidable – because everyone knows how expensive it is to let a defect like that get all the way to production, as opposed to catching it in the numerous rounds of testing which happen before anything is released for the world to see in real life.
Brings to mind a certain scenario where a customer could return an item to a retail store, and because of a defect in the point of sale system, end up being refunded MORE money than they originally paid for the item…remember that one? Ahhh…the memories!
I do find it disheartening, although not at all surprising, that United doesn’t have enough integrity to take responsibility for business applications containing their brand (third party or not), and the defects within those systems which have clearly caused them a loss. But in my opinion, the fault is not with the savvy consumer seizing the opportunity, where the reward is international travel that is actually attainable, it is with the business and processes that let crappy ass software full of bugs out the door.
But that’s just my .02.
The confirmation I received plus when I go to their website, shows that I will receive over 10k miles for this trip. Considering the ticket costs so little and they are going to revenue based mileage accrual, it should be only like 1k miles. Do you think they are not going to convert or just a mistake in how it is shown?
So is the issue he committed “fraud” or he blogged about it? The ball is on United’s court. They can honor it or not honor it. In any case, I don’t think anybody is going to have Scott Peterson as jailmate over it.