go! briefly brings back $1 airfares
The Mesa carrier says it will periodically offer $1 isle flights, which were sold yesterday
go! briefly offered $1 fares again yesterday, and said it intends to dangle the bargain-basement fare -- first used last month for its first anniversary -- in front of consumers in the future.
The interisland airline of Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group Inc. offered the $1 tickets via a newspaper ad, e-mail alerts and on its Web site, but restrictions were tight. The purchasing deadline was 11:59 last night, and the fare was good for travel only today.
"We like the ring of it," Mesa Chairman and Chief Executive Jonathan Ornstein said. "We like the way it's worked. It definitely attracts traffic to the Web site and it's fun. People clearly have told us they really like the $1 sale."
Both Aloha Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines declined to match.
Unlike the last time, when go!'s online reservation system crashed for eight hours after being inundated with bargain hunters, there were no technical problems. Ornstein declined to say how many $1 tickets had been made available.
Ornstein said that given the success and acceptance by the public that "you'll see these kind of sales in the future."
The first $1 sale, which allowed consumers to buy $1 tickets each way, was in celebration of go!'s June 9 one-year anniversary and was held on June 11.
Yesterday's sale terms required customers to purchase a regular fare as part of a round trip and stay a minimum of one night, which meant that the cheapest round trip a consumer could get would have been $40, including a $39 regular fare. Coupled with Sept. 11 security fees of up to $5 each way and a federal segment excise tax of $3.40 per segment, the overall cost for a round trip would be $56.80.