South Africans have an opportunity to grab a flight ticket for the absurdly low cost of just R11, but you’ll need to act fast.
FlySafair has announced that it is bringing back its popular birthday sale for 2025, offering a limited number of flight tickets for an incredibly low price.
The catch is that the sale is only available today (Wednesday, 7 May), starting at 09h00 and ending at 23h59 tonight.
During this time, individuals will have an opportunity to book a flight across any of the air carrier’s domestic routes.
Importantly, the sale is limited to 50,000 tickets, and interested parties will need to book online at the company’s website, which can be found here.
Due to the popularity of the sale, visitors to the site will be sent to a digital waiting room, after which they will have a limited time to complete their purchase.
“As with previous sales, the airline will once again have a waiting room to protect the website and customer sales experience,” said FlySafair.
“Throughout the sale, the waiting room will provide access to a select number of lucky customers who will then have 10 minutes to complete their purchase.”
The airline added that those in the waiting room can search for flights using the R11 Fare Finder, and enter FlySafair’s Free Flights for a Year competition.
“To pass the time, customers can also play a new waiting room game, Flappy Plane. Please note the FlySafair App will be available for normal bookings, for those not looking for a R11 ticket.”
Customers are also advised to familiarize themselves with the terms and conditions of the sale, which can be found at the FlySafair help desk.
Lucky break for cheap flights
Back in April, the The Air Services Licencing Council (ASLC) and International Air Services Licencing Council (IASLC) declared that they would hold off on imposing sanctions on FlySafair for the time being.
The airline was found to be in contravention of local ownership laws and currently has 12 months to resolve the issue.
In January 2025, the ASLC announced that FlySafair’s ownership structure does not adhere to South African law, which requires that domestic airlines have to be at least 75% locally owned.
It found that the Irish ASL Aviation currently holds a majority stake of 74.86% in FlySafair and concluded that the airline’s ownership structure violates South African and international air services licencing regulations.
The ASLC was meant to decide on sanctions for the airline for its contravention of these legal requirements, but this did not take place as the council was asked to hold off on the ruling.
Sources at the former council confirmed that the sanction has yet to be issued because they were asked to hold off at the cut-off date on 31 March and were not given the chance to finalize the sanction.
The serving ASLC members’ term expired at the end of March, which led to the Department of Transport changing the members of the council before a decision could be made on FlySafair.
The situation has raised concerns that FlySafair’s services may be impacted in some way, with major ramifications for the local aviation industry.
FlySafair is the nation’s largest domestic air carrier, accounting for roughly 60% of all air traffic.
Any disruptions to this service would therefore put a massive strain on the remaining flight capacity, leading to price hikes from all airlines, including other services like Lift and Airlink.
In a worst-case scenario, FlySafair could be grounded altogether, resulting in astronomical price hikes from the remaining airlines.
FlySafair has also warned that its suspension could lead to several job losses in the aviation industry given the number of people involved in its operations, both directly or indirectly.
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