Durban - No frills domestic airline, FlySafair, has been inundated over its sale of R1 tickets, and is expecting a R4.6-million loss from its birthday promotion.
FlySafair vice-president of sales, Kirby Gordon, confirmed calculations from its rival, Mango, that the airline would need to pay about R150 a ticket sold to airport authorities for mandatory airport tax.
FlySafair allocated 30 000 seats to be sold this week at R1, including taxes, which means the company would need to cough up about R4.6m in airport tax.
The Daily News made several attempts online to book seats on Tuesday, without success as the site responded with an “unknown site error” message.
FlySafair’s call centre was also not accessible except for an automated message service about the airline’s service.
Gordon said the airline’s website was experiencing technical difficulties because of the unprecedented surge in demand for the R1 rate.
“The offer is only available online and our US technical partners have reported that they have never seen demand on this scale before.
“By yesterday morning we had already sold around 5 000 out of the 30 000 allocated seats at the R1 price. We will be extending the sale to ensure that consumers can get a fair chance at access to these tickets,” Gordon said.
Impressed
The promotion has not impressed Mango, which accused FlySafair of what it called “imitating its marketing campaigns”.
“We accept the rivalry and ongoing imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. The emotional drivers and tonality of our competitor has brought back fond memories of our first campaigns.
“Their current R1 sale, even more so. Competition is always welcome and, when campaigns similar to our own are run, recall is likely in our favour given the number of years Mango has already employed this tonality and these tactics,” said Mango spokesman, Hein Kaiser.
An aviation insider who asked not to be named has warned that the promotion by FlySafair was dangerous to the airline’s cash flow.
“The signs of desperation are there and seems to follow the same pattern of other low cost airlines who adopted similar strategies before realising they could not sustain themselves financially.
“Airlines are a ruthless and aggressive business which yield no more than one percent profit margins, which equates to around R2 per ticket. Any potential loss of R4.6m means the company is having to dip into its reserves to sustain the loss and that is a very dangerous position for any airline to be in,” the insider said.
Daily News