FlySafair is becoming famous for its ridiculously cheap tickets, the latest drawing from local Olympian, Wayde van Niekerk’s world record-breaking performance.
At 2am South African time today, van Niekerk won and broke a 17-year-old record in the men’s 400m at the Rio Olympics. The athlete set a new world record of 43.03 seconds.
Earlier today, FlySafair announced it was selling 400 tickets at R43.03 to celebrate the win.
To honour Wayde’s record we have 400 R43.03 seats on select flights till 28/8! Book @ https://t.co/WHR2Gnrr18. *T&Cs pic.twitter.com/5lIGdu6ILN
— FlySafair (@FlySafair) August 15, 2016
As always, South Africans made a dash to book try and book their tickets online (see what we did there!).
And as we’ve come to see with the FlySafair dirt-cheap ticket sales, the airline’s site experienced a number of issues as people traffic flooded to the site.
@FlySafair Guess it’s only Wayde who’s running…coz you’re site sure isn’t.
— Lauren Moses (@LaurenMoses87) August 15, 2016
@FlySafair what’s the point!! Since the announcement getting this response ??? pic.twitter.com/NERlGHpRIB
— Natalie Khambi (@Nataliekhambi) August 15, 2016
@FlySafair website down
— Zana (@zaanadee) August 15, 2016
By 1:45pm, under three hours after the announcement, all tickets had been sold out.
And that’s a wrap! All R43,03 tickets are now SOLD OUT
— FlySafair (@FlySafair) August 15, 2016
You’ve got to give it to the FlySafair marketing/PR team for the promo, but we think they really need to get their servers in order for the next time they do this.