United will not have to honor absurdly low mistake fares

United Airlines will not have to honor the "mistake fares" it sold for as little as $50 for first-class overseas flights, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Monday.

Many customers who bought the tickets had requested that the DOT review the situation. Some argued that United should be bound by the agency's consumer protection rules requiring airlines to honor so-called mistake fares.

However, the DOT concluded United was not obligated to do so in this case. In part, that was because customers "had to manipulate the search process" to produce a "conversion error" to get the absurdly low fares, the DOT said.

"Consistent with the Office's treatment of fare advertisements and disclosure of baggage fees, it does not intend to enforce the rule in question (the post-purchase price increase prohibition) when the fare offer is not marketed to consumers in the United States," the DOT's Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings said in a Monday statement.

"Additionally, the Office is concerned that to obtain the fare, some purchasers had to manipulate the search process on the website in order to force the conversion error to Danish Krone by misrepresenting their billing address country as Denmark when, in fact, Denmark was not their billing address country. This evidence of bad faith by the large majority of purchasers contributed to the Enforcement Office's decision."

As you might expect, United welcomed the decision.

"We appreciate that the U.S. DOT has decided that the February 11 exchange rate error does not warrant enforcement action," the carrier said in a statement to Today in the Sky.