Third round of free tickets from Hong Kong Airlines causes frustration again as users complain of 2-hour wait
- Third round of return trips covers flights to mainland Chinese destinations, Japan and Taiwan, with 8,500 tickets up for grabs from Monday morning
- Airport Authority says average daily passenger numbers reached 60 per cent of pre-pandemic levels last month, as city continues ‘steady recovery’
A third round of free tickets in a Hong Kong Airlines promotional campaign has again left some online users frustrated amid attempts to land trips to mainland China, Taiwan and Japan.
The Hong Kong Airport Authority said the total number of passengers passing through in July reached 3.8 million, equivalent to 57 per cent of the figure for the same month in pre-pandemic 2019.
But the 20.4 million passengers the airport handled in the first seven months of the year was still well below the 44.6 million recorded during the same period of 2019.
Internet users earlier in the morning had rushed to secure free tickets under the third round of a promotional drive by Hong Kong Airlines.
The local carrier made 8,500 complimentary return tickets available from 10am on a first come, first served basis, after a frenzied response to two earlier rounds this month and in late July prompted the company to apologise for long waits.
Users needed to enter a portal via the airline’s website to queue for a ticket to their preferred destination in the latest round. Applicants had only one choice for cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Haikou, Taipei, Beijing, Fukuoka or Okinawa, for departures from September 1 to March 24 next year.
But they were required to pay applicable taxes, surcharges and other fees and their length of stay at the destination must be between two and seven days.
As of Monday evening, the carrier said only tickets to Haikou were available as the rest had sold out.
The costs of the tickets are covered by the Airport Authority under the government’s “Hello Hong Kong” campaign to revive the travel industry after three years of pandemic shutdown.
The quota for each destination in the carrier’s latest promotion varied, with Tokyo taking up the top spot with 2,100 tickets and Okinawa having the least openings at 500.
Shanghai is the mainland city with the largest quota of 1,800 tickets, while Beijing had the least at 800.
Hundreds of users took to the carrier’s Facebook page to complain, while others expressed joy over securing tickets.
A user named Chloe Chow lamented that waiting times to enter the portal exceeded two hours the moment the giveaway launched. “It’s only 10.01am and the waiting time is already two hours. If they really wanted to give out tickets, they should launch a raffle, really,” she wrote on the page.
Others complained of being kicked out of the queue midway, with the message: “Apologies, due to overwhelming enthusiasm in response, please visit our page later.”
User Wai Ho, addressing the airline, complained: “Have you not expected this level of eagerness?”
“Queues should be queues. Why on Earth would I be booted out midway through? Does this mean only internal members can get a ticket?” another user Lam Ming Wai added, attracting replies from others saying they were also logged out after 30 minutes of waiting.
The company in previous rounds apologised for technical issues after travel hopefuls complained of long waits and error messages.
The carrier will launch another round of 1,000 free round-trip tickets on the weekend at an event in Causeway Bay to celebrate this year’s launch of new routes to Beijing, Fukuoka, Phuket and Nagoya. The tickets will cover the four new routes as well as to popular destinations, including Bali, Taipei and Shanghai.
Hong Kong Airlines handed out 6,800 tickets to five cities on the mainland, Japan and Indonesia last month. It launched another giveaway two weeks ago with 9,800 trips to the mainland, Japan and Thailand.
Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific has also rolled out ticket giveaways this year. Its most recent round was held last Thursday, offering 50,000 discounted return tickets to 34 destinations around the world.
Cathay’s budget arm Hong Kong Express gave away 21,626 tickets to various locations in East and Southeast Asia last month.
