Low-cost local airline, FlySAfair is celebrating its first birthday today and it’s letting us all in on the festivities by selling tickets at just R1. You can book yourself one or more tickets, that’s if you manage to by some stroke of luck actually get onto the airline’s website which crashed this morning.

FlySAfair announced the promo early this morning and since then, overwhelming traffic to its site has made it virtually impossible for most interested South Africans to even open the home page.

This is how the day panned out.

We managed to get through to the FlySAFair homepage when we tried it out, but were booted out upon trying to secure a booking. FlySAfair said it has added additional server capacity to cope with the load and that customers should keep trying and remain patient. Mango was the first to run a R1 air ticket promo back in May for Windows desktop and mobile users who downloaded the airline’s app and booked through it.

//UPDATE FlySAfair has issued a statement on Facebook about its website’s technical problems, saying that due to it being inaccessible to many customers, it has extended the promo beyond today only. The website has apparently attracted more than 30 times its usual internet traffic load.

“In anticipation we had doubled our already ample server capacity to deal with the day’s demands, but the enthusiastic response is unprecedented. We have already sold over 5000 R1 tickets to delighted passengers and our team are working double-time to ensure that we continue to delight thousands more. We apologise for the delay and advise customers to check back regularly,” the airline said.

[Image – FlySAfair Twitter]