Skyways is a discount airline operator flying to a variety of locations within A

Question

Skyways is a discount airline operator flying to a variety of locations within Australia. It maintains an internet site that prospective passengers must access to make bookings and transact other business with the airline. It frequently advertised ‘top offers’ on most days of the week between

12 noon and 1 pm. These offers usually comprised heavily discounted airfares to popular destinations.

On 10 August 2016, Skyways advertised, as one of its ‘top offers’, a return airfare from Melbourne to Brisbane, for $52.50. Brian happened to access Skyway’s internet site that day and thought that this offer was too good to miss, as the usual return fare to Brisbane was substantially more than $52.50.

Brian immediately entered the booking area of Skyway’s internet site, and made a booking for a return flight from Melbourne to Brisbane, for the total price of $52.50. After accepting the terms and conditions of purchase, (that appeared on another page, but which Brian did not access or read), Brian was taken to the checkout area where he was prompted to select a payment type (either by credit card or direct bank deposit). If the credit card option was selected, confirmation of the booking was promised after verification of the credit card. In the case of the direct deposit option, payment was to be effected by 12 midnight on 10 August 2016, and confirmation of the booking would be sent after receipt by Skyways of the deposited funds. Brian selected the credit card option, entered his card and contact details and clicked the ‘purchase’ button. After a processing period Skyways generated the following message:

“Your booking has been confirmed and the booking reference number is GHYDFQ5. An electronic receipt and itinerary will be sent to your nominated email address within 24 hours”.

A few hours later, Brian received an email from Skyways, stating that a mistake had been made and that the return fare for a flight from Melbourne to Brisbane, on the day nominated, should have been $525. The email also stated that the terms and conditions that Brian had accepted made it quite clear that by clicking the box labelled ‘purchase’, a prospective passenger was deemed to be making an offer to purchase, which Skyways could, at its

sole discretion, accept or reject.

Required

Is there an enforceable contract between Brian and Skyways for the purchase of a return ticket from Melbourne to Brisbane for $52.50?

Discuss with reference to relevant cases and legislation.

Explanation / Answer

Skyways marketed an offer publicly that said that the company is offering a discount return fare from Melbourne to Brisbane, for $52.50. Normally, the fares are much higher than the fare offered during this discount period. Just by publicly marketing this offer to the customers on their portals, which is run by the company, it is deemed to be understood that the company is legally bound to redeem the offer if any customer accesses the offer with the relevant terms and conditions.

Such offers could not be just for marketing to attract public and build traffic to their portal. This will be deemed as the cheating and forgery on the part of the company, so the company has to stand on its offer if any customer is successful in buying the discounted offer.

Now, when Brian bought the offer, with all the Terms & Conditions, with a company system popping out a message that the ticket has been booked and email will be sent later, this meant that the transaction between the parties happened successfully where both the parties agreed mutually to fulfill their obligation. Skyways cannot come around later and say that there was a mistake and they cannot offer the ticket. This will be like breaching the contract once it was established that the ticket was purchased successfully. The instance will be treated as reneging back on the offer, which was first accepted by the company.

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