AUSTRALIA – Qantas launched its highly anticipated $99 sale this week, triggering a nationwide frenzy in which approximately four million Australians simultaneously discovered that the flights they needed were $487 and the $99 ones go to somewhere called Merimbula on a Tuesday.
The sale, which the airline described as “our biggest ever” for the seventeenth consecutive year, offered rock-bottom prices on routes between cities already well-connected by roads, while maintaining standard fares on routes servicing remote and regional Australia where the flying kangaroo holds a de facto monopoly.
“Broome to Perth, still $680 one way” confirmed Aunty Marg from Derby, who has been trying to get to a medical appointment in the city for three weeks. “But apparently I can get to the Gold Coast for ninety-nine bucks if I wanted to, which I don’t, and if I’d clicked faster, which I didn’t.”
The website crashed at 10:03am. Qantas confirmed this was due to “unprecedented demand” and not at all related to the fact that their IT infrastructure was last meaningfully updated around the same time their pilots were being stood down during COVID.
The airline’s CEO (speaking from the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge) said the sale represented the company’s ongoing commitment to connecting all Australians. He did not specify which Australians or to what.
For communities across remote Australia, where Qantas or its regional subsidiaries often provide the only air service, the sale offered the same value as a chocolate teapot – theoretically pleasing but functionally useless.
“We’re not a priority market” said one community health worker in north-west Queensland. “But they put our community’s photo in the ad.”
Qantas finished the financial year with a $2.1 billion profit. The sale ends midnight Sunday. Booking fees apply.
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