Damascus to Shanghai flight tickets surge to 3.82 million yuan? Insider: It may be a supplier error

On February 28, there were reports that a ticketing platform app showed a flight from Damascus to Shanghai Pudong Airport departing at 5:00 PM local time, with a ticket price exceeding 3.82 million yuan.

Regarding the flight “departing at 5:00 PM local time with a price over 3.82 million yuan,” informed sources explained that such cases are often due to manual input errors in the supplier’s backend system, causing display anomalies on the front end. “If it were truly a high-priced ticket, the business would definitely remove it quickly to avoid affecting users and public opinion.”

The source also emphasized that ticket prices on the platform are entered and sold by suppliers themselves, with the difference in price earned by the suppliers. The ticketing platform only serves as a display and transaction matching platform, does not profit from it, and “there’s no need to risk diverting traffic to suppliers.”

Around 6:10 PM on February 28, the reporter checked the ticketing platform app and found that there were no available flights from Damascus to Shanghai on that day. However, some flights were still on sale for March 1 and later, including several high-priced options: for example, a ticket departing on March 1 with transfers in Doha and Kuala Lumpur, priced close to 60,000 yuan including taxes; flights with transfers in Doha and Beijing priced over 70,000 yuan; and flights with transfers in Doha and Guangzhou priced near 70,000 yuan. There are also regular flights with transfers in Doha costing over 10,000 yuan, but prices fluctuate frequently.

By 6:40 PM, the reporter checked the ticketing platform app again and found that tickets from Syria to cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong were no longer available.