FlySafair revealed that it sold out more than 50 000 seats for just R9 apiece when it held its biggest annual sale today.
Travellers hoping to strike it lucky stayed glued to their screens across the country, with many using several devices at one time all in the hopes of grabbing some tickets for just R9.
At the end of the day, Kirby Gordon, chief marketing officer at FlySafair, said they were pleased with how the sale went this morning.
“Our website handled record volumes of traffic this year and sales rolled though without hassle,” said Gordon.
FlySafair reported that there were more than 1 425 378 people actively trying their luck in the sale.
“This was up on last year’s sale where the airline saw 1 225 828 people hit their waiting room. During peak demand this year the airline processed record sales of 492 tickets a minute, up from 195 tickets a minute last year,” said FlySafair.
The low-cost carrier revealed that in the end, 50 372 seats were sold for R9 across 16 487 individual bookings. The sale lasted just under five hours, kicking off at 9am on the dot and the last few tickets selling out at about 1.50pm this afternoon.
This year’s waiting room featured a R9 fare finder tool, which hopeful travellers could use to spy out where the R9 tickets were hiding.
“The R9 ticket finder tool alone handled 102 million requests during the sale,” said Gordon.
FlySafair also said that the R9 tickets were spread across the airlines comprehensive domestic route network.
“Most tickets were sold on flights between Johannesburg and Cape Town as well as Johannesburg and Durban. Johannesburg to George, and Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth also featured prominently,” said FlySafair.
Data from the carrier also revealed that more than 49% of the shoppers were based in Gauteng, with 21% in the Western Cape, 10% in KwaZulu-Natal and 4% in the Eastern Cape.
“We hope that this sale has given many people who’ve not yet been able to fly the opportunity to experience air travel,” said Gordon.
The carrier also revealed that most shoppers (60%) accessed the sale from mobile devices, with 39% using desktop devices.
“Every year we get stacks of pictures on social media of people showing us how many devices they were using to try and access tickets. It was interesting to see 479 gaming consoles and 3 100 smart televisions sitting in the waiting room this year too,” said Gordon.
In an added surprise, any seats not being sold for R9 were on sale for 30% off the net fare, effectively creating a double dose of sale savings. While the R9 seats are now sold out, the airline will be keeping the 30% off sale live until midnight tonight, giving more travellers the opportunity to access savings.
FlySafair also said that the sale has become something of a hallmark for the airline, which has now sold more than 150 000 tickets for anything between R1 and R9 over the past nine years.
“We decided nine years ago that instead of putting investment into expensive media to promote the airline, we’d put faith in our product and put people onto aircraft seats to see what it’s all about. Obviously the sale generates a good amount of attention for the airline too, so it’s a win for us and a win for consumers,” said Gordon.