Cape Town - Low cost carrier, FlySafair has sold its one millionth ticket, just four months after celebrating the 500 000-ticket milestone, which was achieved in under nine months.
FlySafair launched with just one route, Johannesburg/Cape Town, and one aircraft in October 2014. Today, it offers the largest route network in South Africa out of all low-cost carriers, served by six aircraft – soon to be eight.
Healthy competition in the South African low-cost carrier market over the past 12 months has driven down the cost of domestic travel – saving the flying public upwards of an estimated R614-million.
FlySafair shook up the domestic market in 2014 when it launched with fares for as low as R499 on routes that typically cost over R1 000. Flight prices have since decreased by as much as 39 percent on certain domestic routes and demand for domestic travel on popular routes has increased by 38 percent.
The airline claims that the key to maintaining sustainably low fares is to follow the true low-cost airline model.
“We need to draw a distinction between a low-fare airline and a low-cost airline,” says Elmar Conradie, CEO of FlySafair. “Low costs will lead to low fares, so it’s important to focus on those costs by driving your economies through flying the correct aircraft, on an efficient schedule, with the correct financing structures in place,” he adds.
“Our strategy has always been to offer affordable, on-time air travel for all South Africans. FlySafair is here for the long haul and couples its strategy with ongoing market research into consumer behaviour and opinions,” says Conradie.
One of those consumer research initiatives resulted in the launch of two new routes. Earlier this year, FlySafair polled more than 20 000 South Africans and found that the demand for flights from East London and Durban to Cape Town and Johannesburg was significant. Initially, FlySafair was only going to offer one of these routes, but decided to roll out both in response to high customer demand.
Kirby Gordon, Vice President for sales, distribution and marketing, says: “FlySafair commands approximately 15 percent of the web traffic to low-cost airline websites in South Africa, yet our marketing spend is only 11 percent of all airlines. This compared to one of our bigger competitors who clearly follows a more classic strategy accounting for 52 percent of the marketing spend but only boasting 23 percent of the traffic share.”
“It’s not just about competing, but creating a sustainable business model that facilitates years of consumer delight, which is typically associated with healthy competition,” ends Conradie.
Adapted from a press release for IOL