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After a two-year hiatus, the FlySafair mega-sale returned with a splash. The airline released over 30 000 tickets at R8 each, including airport taxes.

“It feels really special to bring back our famous R8 sale after the last two years,” says Kirby Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer at FlySafair. “The pandemic unfortunately meant we had to hit pause on our annual mega-sale to refocus our efforts on securing jobs for our staff, the integrity of the business and place in the industry. After a couple of conservative years, we felt it was a good time to bring some joy to South Africans and their travel budgets.”

The airline made over 30 000 seats available across its entire domestic route network for flights departing up until the end of October 2022 for the low price of R8 a ticket including all airport taxes. A record smashing 1.7 million South Africans flocked to FlySafair’s waiting room to try their luck at getting onto the site secure the cheap seats.

The waiting room doors opened at 07:00 and the first randomly selected customers were given access to the site at 09:00. In the end, the airline sold 31 713 seats – well above the 30 000 initially promised – at just R8 each, with the last sale ticket being sold at 18:11. At its busiest point the waiting room hosted a record 1.07 million people all waiting to see if they would be one of the lucky ones chosen to access the site each minute.

“We’ve learnt a lot over the years since we ran our first sale in 2015 when we sold tickets at R1. Being wiser and more experienced, we’ve invested a great deal in our IT infrastructure and have introduced features like the waiting room to maintain order. We’ve also included a random selection process that helps to ensure that access to the ridiculously cheap tickets is fair.”

The waiting plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of the website while customers make their bookings. The airline reported a low error rate on the day of the sale.

Twitter was of course alive with waiting room chatter. A number of passengers shared their successful sales purchases, while others continued to share snaps of their waiting room experience.

“While there’s a lot of pressure on the day, it’s a good reminder of why we do what we do. Our main purpose has been to open the skies to more South Africans and the sale is an opportunity to really breakdown the barriers to entry for air travel.”

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