Customers scrambling to get hold of free round-trip flight tickets to 13 destinations in Asia courtesy of Hong Kong Airlines were told they would need to wait online for more than two hours on Aug 6 to access the promotion.

The carrier is offering about 7,500 free round-trip tickets for select economy class seats from 10am on Tuesday until Monday of next week on its official website.

The promotion covers flights from Hong Kong to Bangkok, Taipei, Taichung, Bali, Da Nang, Osaka, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Okinawa, Chongqing, Haikou, Sanya and Beijing. Tickets are limited to one per person.

All tickets are sponsored by Hong Kong’s airport and include a 20kg (44lbs) checked baggage allowance and another 7kg for carry-on items. Taxes and surcharges for the fares are not included.

But visitors to the airline’s website faced long queues in the first hour of logging in, with many users saying the webpage displayed a message telling them they would have to wait for at least two hours. Others complained that they were unable to access the site at all.

The latest promotion follows a raft of discount airfares from Cathay Pacific Airways’ budget carrier, HK Express, and Greater Bay Airlines, with the two earlier competing for bargain-hunting passengers by offering Hong Kong-Tokyo return tickets for HK$10 and HK$20 , respectively.

Both carriers launched cut-price fares to Japan’s capital in July, experiencing head-to-head sales as they sought to capitalise on travellers looking for cheap summer holidays.

 - SCMP