Free plane tickets come with a price

Hongkongers hoping to grab any of the 21,626 free HK Express flight tickets to 19 Asian destinations went through a "never-ending" wait yesterday.

The airline's giveaway campaign - you still have to pay for tax and surcharges - is part of the Airport Authority's "World of Winners" promotion aimed at boosting the recovery of Hong Kong's air travel.

A total of 80,000 free flight tickets are being given away through different channels of HK Express, Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Airlines. Both Cathay and Hong Kong Airlines had earlier given most of the free tickets to overseas visitors.

The HK Express campaign began at 10.30am, with its website already experiencing heavy traffic hours before the launch. Most visitors to the website were reportedly stuck in queue for hours.

All tickets to seven cities in Japan, three in Korea, three in Thailand, two in Vietnam and three in Taiwan were booked as of 5.51pm, seven-and-a-half hours after the campaign began, said the airline.

Web users said they logged onto HK Express's website at 10.30am sharp and already found themselves in a queue for over an hour.

A reporter from The Standard logged onto the website at 10.30am and at 2.30pm the progress bar had barely moved, while the waiting time of "more than an hour" had not changed.

Some online users complained on the airline's Facebook page about the long waiting time. "I have waited for two hours but never made it to the eight-minute [ticket purchasing] process," a comment read.

HK Express replied to the post, saying the queue arrangement was to ensure the stability of the server.

"Due to the overwhelming response and large number of participants, in order to ensure the stability of server operation, the system will arrange for participants to queue up and the waiting time for entering the ticketing page will be a little longer," it said.

It suggested consumers select flights and fill out the required information immediately or they might have to queue up again due to the time limit.

Some web users commented that they had successfully logged on to the website and selected free air tickets, but after entering their credit card information, they suddenly lost the connection to the website, not knowing whether they had completed the transaction.

Meanwhile, some browsers alleged that the website had allowed people to log in before the start time, which they said was unfair. Some said the campaign is "only a scam." The company said the first ticket was sold after 10.30am.

stacy.shi@singtaonewscorp.com