Almost 1.5 million people tried to get their hands on bargain tickets in FlySafair’s R9 ticket sale on 3 May.
By: Lorne Philpot
FlySafair’s bargain flight ticket sale always creates somewhat of a frenzy for South Africans looking to bag some cheap flight tickets.
BARGAIN FLIGHT TICKETS
Millions of South Africans always try to get their hands on Flysafair’s cheap tickets. However, there are always disappointments for many South Africans because the airline only makes a limited number of its seats available at low cost.
This year Flysafair made 50 000 seats available for purchase. Getting one of those seats is often like pulling hen’s teeth for most customers, who find they do not even gain access to the website, but spend hours in the waiting room.
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FLYSAFAIR TICKET BONANZA
The airline has over the years held a number of these bargain flight bonanzas, where it offers flight tickets to a number of local destinations at knockout prices.
These 50 000 seats were available for sale at only R9 each for any of Flysafair’s domestic flights, operating between 3 May and 30 November 2023.
FLIGHT SALE
Flysafair opened its bargain airfare sale at 09.00 in the morning, and slowly allowed people onto its website, to ensure that the site would not crash.
By 13:50 the airline had sold 50 372 tickets at R9 per flight through 16 487 individual bookings.
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RECORD NUMBER OF SALES
According to Flysafair’s data, 1 425 378 people tried to get their hands on the 50 000 bargain price air tickets. This is apparently 200 000 more than recorded in 2022.
“Our website handled record volumes of traffic this year and sales rolled through without hassle. During peak demand this year the airline processed sales for 492 tickets a minute up from 195 tickets a minute last year,” Flysafair’s Kirby Gordon said, per News24.
BARGAIN FLIGHTS
Having only 50 000 tickets at bargain prices, for an audience of almost 1.5 million potential buyers would mean a lot disappointment for a great number of South Africans who came away empty-handed.
Most tickets were sold for flights between Johannesburg and Cape Town, followed by flights between Johannesburg and Durban, according to News24.
Around 60% of the buyers used mobile devices to buy tickets. Most of the sales were made in Gauteng (49%), followed by the Western Cape (21%), KwaZulu-Natal (10%), and the Eastern Cape (4%).
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