Hong Kong: For a lucky few, it’s the gift that keeps on giving: a CathayPacific snafu offering premium tickets at a fraction of their value, forthe second time in less than two weeks.

On its website Sunday morning, Cathay was offering first-class flights fromLisbon to Hong Kong — via a connecting flight through London with apartner airline — for just $1,512, the South China Morning Post reported.

A similar journey in first-class via Frankfurt meanwhile, would settravellers back an eye-watering $16,000.

“We are looking into the root cause of this incident both internally andexternally with our vendors,” a Cathay spokesperson, who attributed theerror to an “input issue”, was cited as saying.

The Hong Kong-based carrier will honour the cheap fares for the “very smallnumber” of savvy and fortunate travellers, the spokesperson added, as itdid last time.

Cathay did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.

Airline and travel blogs went into overdrive on New Year’s Eve aftereagle-eyed shoppers noticed the carrier was offering first and businessclass tickets on its website from Vietnam to the United States and Canadafor as little as $670.

That represented a staggering discount from the usual $16,000 round tripflight on first class, and $4-6,000 on business class.

It took two days for Cathay to publicly acknowledge the error, and aspokesperson declined to say how many tickets were sold at the discountedprice.

Cathay had a tough year in 2018. It continued to struggle with the rise ofcheaper mainland Chinese rivals, losing $33 million in the first six monthsof the year.

Then in October it sparked outrage among customers and politicians in HongKong when it admitted to a massive data breach five months after hackersmade off with the data of 9.4 million customers, including some passportnumbers and credit card details. -APP/AFP