Traveling During The Pandemic? You May Get Seats Through A ‘Buy One Get One Free’ Deal

To pull up the spiraling travel demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines across the world are now trying to entice flyers by offering attractive discounts like “buy one get one free” deals.

Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, is offering for the first time ever 2-for-1 special flights through mid-December.

AirAsia, mainly operating out of Southeast Asia, sold as many as 200,000 “unlimited passes,” which allowed customers in some markets to travel as much as they wished for a limited time period. This scheme has exceeded expectations of the airlines, as some customers used the pass as many as 20 times.

Alaska Air Group offered customers a three-seat row for the price of one through sales in the past three months.

Alaska Air has been launching three promotional offers a month when it usually runs only 10 to 12 promotions a year. During the third quarter, the airline said ticket prices dropped by 17%. “We are able to stimulate demand in a way we weren’t sure we’d be able to,” Natalie Bowman, managing director of marketing and advertising at Alaska Air, told The Wall Street Journal.

Such deals are helping airlines operate at least some of their flights, while most of their planes remain parked. The carriers want to drop prices enough to stimulate demand, so they can break even.

Airlines are slashing prices around peak travel times like never before, Scott Keyes of price tracker Scott’s Cheap Flights is quoted as saying in the WSJ. Round trips by full-service carriers over Christmas from New York City to Nashville may be as less as $71 this year, down from $300, he added.

The holiday season has brought with it some hope of demand in the U.S., while in Europe, new lockdowns threaten the aviation industry again.

The devastation of the aviation industry during the coronavirus pandemic has prompted airlines to walk newer paths like turning their planes into restaurants. Singapore Airlines did the same with its A380 superjumbo jets for two days in October. It had to add another day for the first lunch batch sold out quickly.

Similarly, Taiwan’s EVA Air made its flights into “aviation camps” wherein customers got guided tours of operations, simulated experiences of flying a plane, putting out a fire in a mock cabin, etc. The price range for these experiences was between $100 and $350.