It's time for the joy and frustration of the FlySafair birthday sale.
Now five years in the running - FlySafair's annual sale, has been given a mega boost and will see 45 000 seats selling for just R5 each.
The sale starts Tuesday morning at 9am, for travel valid until September 2019. The R5 includes airport taxes.
But this year’s sale is bigger and better than ever before, says the airline.
“We’ve bought new aircraft and grown our business by almost 40% over the last year, so we decided to up the number of R5 seats from 30 000 to 45 000. We’re especially grateful for all the support FlySafair has received from its customers,” says Kirby Gordon, Head of Sales and Distribution, speaking to the increased number of seats available during this year’s sale.
Game On
This year, the airline will be running three competitions alongside the sale to offer customers something to do while they wait for their chance to get R5 tickets. Customers who find themselves in the digital waiting room can enter:
- The Free2Fly promotion, where they can win a magical card that allows them to fly on any FlySafair flight for free, for 12 whole months.
- The Jive for R5 promotion, where they can submit the best video of them jiving for their R5 tickets. Five winners will then be selected, who will each receive one of five FlySafair return tickets.
- The R5 Madness competition, every year, the airline receives pictures on social media of people with multiple devices lined up waiting to gain access to its sale. Customers can share a picture of them and their colleagues with all their devices for a chance to win an awesome online shopping voucher.
So, as you gear up to face the R5 ticket sale mayhem, keep the below tips in mind:
- Use multiple devices – it’s true, the more devices you’re using the better your chances of gaining access to the site.
- When you’re in, don’t refresh your page – there’s a chance that you’ll be sent back into the waiting room.
- Use FlySafair’s Low Fare Finder to track down the R5 flights – the airline has a tool on its site allowing you to view the cheapest departures each day for a month. This is the easiest way to find cheap flights.
- Keep your eye on the prize – once you get through to the site there’s a limited period of time before your session will expire due to inactivity, so you need to start booking as soon as possible.
How it will work:
Learning from the first year’s website issues, FlySafair implemented what it calls a “Waiting Room” in year two. This is effectively a holding area that allows a random selection of users onto the site every five minutes in order to avoid the website from being overwhelmed.
Here’s how it will work – at the start of the sale, a number of customers will be randomly selected from the group of online users in the waiting room.
Selected customers will then be allowed to enter the airline’s website where they will need to complete their purchase immediately, or their session will expire. Tickets can only be reserved by completing payment.
If customers haven’t yet been selected, they should remain in FlySafair’s digital waiting room, as a new group will be selected at random to enter the site every five minutes. And different groups will continue to be selected right up until the last ticket is sold. FlySafair has provided this step-by-step video detailing the random selection process.
“The solution works well, and it adds an element of random selection to the sale, which feels like it makes the sale somehow seem fairer,” says Gordon.
South African consumers quickly wised-up to the setup and tried to up their chances of gaining access to the site by using multiple devices to access the site.
“There were images of entire boardrooms of people basking in the glow of our site, it was awesome.”
Happy birthday FlySafair and Good luck Saffas!
Find Your Escape by searching and comparing flight prices here. You can also sign-up for the Traveller24 Weekly Newsletter – Subscribe here. Or download the News24 App here, to receive expertly curated travel ideas and deals directly to your mobile.