Mechanisms and Governance of Airline Pricing Anomalies in Mainland China

Pricing anomalies have become a recurrent operational risk in contemporary airline markets, especially where fare construction depends on heterogeneous data inputs, layered business rules, automated pricing engines, and multichannel distribution. This study develops a governance-oriented, mechanism-first analysis of pricing anomalies, with a particular focus on representative cases from mainland China. Drawing on documented cases, operational practices, and process evidence, the paper examines how pricing anomalies emerge, propagate, and are governed across the fare lifecycle. The analysis organizes anomaly sources into four operational layers: data integrity, rule governance, system reliability, and distribution coordination. Building on this structure, the paper proposes a four-stage control framework spanning prerelease validation, postrelease active scanning, in-transaction anomaly warning, and rapid containment and correction, with postincident learning feeding back into earlier control layers. The study contributes by clarifying the mechanisms through which pricing anomalies arise, structuring their governance logic, and illustrating their operational implications through representative cases in the mainland Chinese market. These findings contribute to research on airline revenue integrity and operational risk in data-driven pricing systems, while also offering practical guidance for the governance of complex digital pricing environments.