The response to Go Airline's one-day, $1 sale last week was so overwhelming that it caused the airline's web site to crash.
According to Mesa Air Group, Go's parent company, about 20,000 people visited iflygo.com in the first hour of the sale, and that Sabre, the Web site's booking engine provider, was unable to handle the volume. The Web site was down for several hours while Sabre conducted repairs, the company said.
The $1 fare was Mesa’s way of celebrating Go’s one-year anniversary. The airline had notified its regular customers on Monday of the sale, which was for midweek travel from June 11 through Dec. 15. The carrier, which operates interisland service in Hawaii, made 1,000 one-way tickets available for a buck each, giving online buyers a 12-hour window to purchase the tickets.
To make up for the computer glitch, Go added another 1,000 seats to the sale and extended the booking deadline five hours.
Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha Airlines did not match the anniversary fare. The legacy carriers have routinely matched Go's fares since the low-cost carrier launched.
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