1.7 million passengers flocked to FlySafair website for R8 ticket sale

FlySafair has sold 31 713 seats – well above the 30 000 initially promised – in its R8 per flight deal.

The low-cost carrier said the last sale ticket was 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,” said FlySafair Chief Marketing Officer Kirby Gordon.

After a two-year hiatus, the FlySafair mega-sale returned with a splash.

The airline released over 30 000 across its entire domestic route network for flights departing up until the end of October 2022.

Tickets were sold at R8 each, including airport taxes.

“It feels really special to bring back our famous R8 sale after the last two years,” said Gordon.

“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 our 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,” added Gordan.

Waiting room doors opened at 07:00 and the first randomly selected customers were given access to the site at 09:00.

Gordon said the team at FlySafair had learnt a lot since the first sale in 2015 when we sold tickets at R1.

The airline invested a great deal in its IT infrastructure and 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,” explained Gordon.

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

Twitter was of course alive with waiting room chatter.

Several passengers shared their successful sales purchases, while others continued to share snaps of their waiting room experience.

Over 5,000 tickets were sold within an hour, with all 30,000 tickets, and then some sold out in just over eight hours.

While the R8 flight sale had many people excited, some criticised FlySafair’s unique, additional cost luggage feature with hilarious internet memes.