Airline mistakenly offers free flights

Forget low-cost flying. On Thursday United Airlines gave away free flights on its website.

A technical glitch led to the airline shutting down its entire booking system after the too-good-to-be-true deal.

Speaking to International Business Times, United Airlines spokeswoman Jennifer Dohm said the deal appeared to offer customers $0 fares for domestic flights - but they were charged up to $10 in taxes.

"One of our filings today contained an error which resulted in certain fares displaying as zero," she said. "We have corrected this error."

USA Today reports that customer Nancy Ilk said she bought a $0 ticket from Minneapolis to Houston with a $10 September 11 security charge added.

She is waiting to see if the airline honours the ticket.

Unfortunately for British travellers, the glitch did not extend to international flights. United Airlines has just announced a new route from Edinburgh to Chicago and the Transatlantic $0 tickets would have been welcomed by passengers from the Scottish airport.

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