THE way Aer Lingus tried to cancel the *5 premier class seats to the U.S. it had "mistakenly" sold on its website last week has done an unfortunate amount of damage to its image here.

Maybe it's because Irish people still see the airline as a kind of national treasure that they expect very high standards from it. But the reality is that Aer Lingus these days is a private company and the government is merely a minority shareholder. Like most other airlines, Aer Lingus now is focused on maximizing profits for its shareholders.

On every issue now that comes up at the airline, whether it's moving the Shannon slots at Heathrow to Belfast or forcing higher productivity from the unions, the management adopts a tough stance. And that was probably what lay beneath the decision last week to cancel the *5 seats to the U.S. Aer Lingus had sold on its website "by mistake."

In case you missed the story - and it was a huge story here for a couple of days last week - what happened was that on Monday of last week Aer Lingus announced in newspaper ads that it was having a summer sale, including lower trans-Atlantic fares. The U.S. from *249, the ads in the Irish papers said.

Sometime very late on Tuesday night or very early on Wednesday morning, the Aer Lingus website changed to include an amazing offer which seemed to be part of the summer sale. It was offering business class seats to New York and Boston for just *5 each way (plus taxes and charges), seats that usually cost around *1,700 each way.

This fantastic offer was only on the website for a few hours before it was removed. But you won't be surprised to hear that at least 100 people who were on their computers early on Wednesday morning spotted it and promptly booked and paid for a few hundred seats at the *5 price.

It was clearly an exceptional offer, although since both Ryanair and Aer Lingus regularly have promotions offering seats to European cities for a few euro, it was not unbelievable.

By Wednesday afternoon, however, Aer Lingus had removed the offer and said it was canceling the *5 seats that people had already paid for online. It e-mailed the people to let them know that their seats were cancelled and that the airline was refunding the credit card payments.

Needless to say, the people involved were very upset. Aer Lingus had offered the seats and accepted the payments on line. Clearly a contract of sale existed (the people had a computer record of the sale and could print out their tickets) which Aer Lingus was now unilaterally reversing.

But an Aer Lingus spokesman said that people should have known that the offer was "too good to be true," that it was "a computer glitch." Therefore this was not a genuine contract that had to be honored. They were canceling the seats and refunding the money, and that was that.

The issue spread across the airwaves that day, and the story then blew up into a national controversy and filled the papers the next morning, getting nearly as much attention as the death of former President Paddy Hillery. Even though only a few hundred potential passengers were affected, the whole country seemed to be angry about it.

And the reason people were angry was simple - Aer Lingus was trying to break the same rules it applies every day of the week to passengers who want to cancel or change tickets.

Now the airline was canceling tickets, the very thing they won't let their customers do. To everyone who has been caught by the Aer Lingus fare rules on cancellations (no refunds) or changes (extra charges), this seemed to be very unfair.

And I can tell you I felt particularly irritated myself, because by coincidence these rules had hit me and my family that very weekend. We're going on holidays to New York in June, and a couple of Fridays ago, not knowing that Aer Lingus was going to start a summer sale on the Monday, I booked and paid for five economy seats to New York at a total cost of *3,552 return.

When I saw in Monday's paper that there was now a sale on I went on to AerLingus.com again and discovered that I could now buy five return seats on the same flights over and back for nearly *800 euro less. Talk about feeling sick!

So I did what most people do ... frantically I called the credit card company to stop payment (I had made the payment on Friday night and it was still early on Monday morning). But the payment had gone through.

So I called Aer Lingus. Can't do anything, they said. No refunds. Read the fare rules.

Like most people booking flights online, when it asks you to "click here" in the little box to confirm that you accept the fare rules, I always do that without ever clicking on the rules to remind myself what they are. Be honest - when did you last click on fare rules?

When you do, you learn that under cancellations there are no refunds at any time except for business class (and restrictions apply there). Further down under date and name changes, it lists the extra charges for altering your ticket and also tells you that if you change the date "there will be no refund of the difference in fare should the new fare be of lower value to the original fare."

In other words, if you have bought your ticket and then later on the price of the seat drops in a sale or offer, you can't get your money back.

So if you cancel your tickets you can't get a refund. And if you spot a cheaper price in a promotion or sale after you have bought your tickets, you can't get back the money you have lost.

They're the fare rules, I was told, and because it's a legal contract there's nothing you can do. The rules can NEVER be broken.

Except that last Wednesday, suddenly never did not mean never. It was now the airline that was losing out rather than the customer because of a "mistake," and suddenly the contract of sale rules could be broken, after all.

So - *800 down because of buying my seats two days before the summer sale began - you can imagine how upset I felt about this. Sickened though I had been, I had accepted the situation on Monday.

I could not get back the *800 I had lost and I accepted that. It said so in the rules of the online ticket.

But then on Wednesday, Aer Lingus were saying that THEY could cancel tickets, even though a legal sale had taken place. It seemed like there was to be one rule for them and another rule for customers.

The reaction to this situation here last week among the public was one of extreme annoyance. Then the National Consumer Agency got involved, and after that the minister, both urging Aer Lingus to make some kind of offer to the customers who had bought the cheap seats to the U.S. in good faith.

For a day Aer Lingus stuck to its position, its reputation dropping faster than a plane in heavy turbulence as the LiveLine national radio phone-in show was besieged with callers.

But then, as the bad publicity grew into a storm, Aer Lingus suddenly did a u-turn and backed down. The spokesman was sent back on the airwaves to reverse their position and eat humble pie.

He said that after reviewing in detail what had happened on their website, they had decided that they were wrong to try to cancel the *5 tickets to the U.S. and would now honor them, except in economy class, not business class.

The result was relief all around, even though the airline was solving its problem on the cheap. Whatever their legal entitlements, almost all the people involved seemed to be happy to get to the U.S. for *5 in economy seats. The uncertain alternative would be to go to court, and that could take months.

All this turbulence for Aer Lingus and its passengers carries two lessons. Firstly, if you're a passenger, always read the fare rules.

Second, if you're in Aer Lingus management, always remember that most people still see the airline as "the national airline," the friendly big bird with the big green shamrock on the tail, an airline that genuinely cares about its customers. And because of that, people expect Aer Lingus not just to be fair, but to be generous in a way that they never expect Ryanair to be.

That image is something very precious, something that money can't buy. Aer Lingus put it at risk last week.

But the airline did the right thing in the end, which is something that other airlines might not have done, and time will repair the damage.