Flyers flock to FlySafair's R11 sale
About four seconds. That was my record playing the 'Flappy Bird' game, which kept more than a million hopeful flyers entertained during the FlySafair 'MegaSale' on Wednesday.
The annual sale from low-cost carrier FlySafair has become a calendar event for South Africans searching for a cheap-as-chips airfare, and this year the airline offered 50,000 tickets at just R11 per seat. Last year it was R10, but, hey, inflation.
What's most impressive is that the R11 includes airport taxes! On a typical flight from Cape Town to OR Tambo International Airport, airport taxes and aviation levies would usually account for R875 of the fare.
So it's no surprise that the FlySafair website—or, rather, the waiting room established to prevent the site from crashing—hosted over 1.4 million visitors during the sale.
This year, the final tally for the waiting room was 1.484 million people, slightly down from last year's figure of 1,713,980. With the sale kicking off at 9am, it's no surprise that traffic peaked in the first two hours, but the final ticket was sold at 4:12pm.
Flights between Johannesburg and Cape Town are the most popular each year, with 24% of the tickets on sale allocated to this route. This is followed by Johannesburg/Durban, Durban/Joburg, Lanseria/Cape Town, and Cape Town/Durban.
'Since we ran our first birthday sale in 2015, we have sold 315 000 tickets between R1 and R11,' said Kirby Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer at FlySafair. It's thanks to the support of our team and customers that we can share our love of flying with more people each year. Congratulations to this year's lucky R11 ticket holders, and here's to many more years of flying with heart.'
Did you get a ticket? I'm sad to say I didn't, but then I was working to specific dates. If you got a seat for the price of 22 Chappies, bon voyage!
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