Cathay Pacific's Wikipedia page edited multiple times on day of S'pore ticket giveaway

It was one of the questions you had to get right in order to qualify for the free tickets.

Matthias Ang | March 02, 2023, 04:54 PM

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The Wikipedia page of Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific was edited multiple times on Mar. 2 -- the same day it held a giveaway of 12,500 free flight tickets from Singapore to Hong Kong.

The edits pertained to the year of the airline's founding.

They appear to have been made after the giveaway began, with the first edit being done at 12:07 pm (Wikipedia's timings are displayed in Coordinated Universal Time [UTC], which is eight hours behind Singapore).

The last edit was done at 12:58pm.

The giveaway began at 12pm.

All of the IP addresses involved in the edits also appear to be based in Singapore, according to the site WhatIsMyIPAddress.com.

Source: Screenshot via Wikipedia

Year of founding edited on Wikipedia multiple times

The giveaway involved answering three questions about Cathay Pacific, including the year when it was founded.

Participants must answer all questions correctly in order to qualify for the draw.

Source: Screenshot from Cathay Pacific Website by Mothership reader

According to the airline's website, Cathay Pacific was first founded in 1946.

The first edit on Wikipedia was at 12:07pm. The year the airline was founded was erroneously changed to 1947 in the infobox.

However, the text still showed the correct year in which the airline was founded.

Source: Screenshot via Wikipedia

Both were changed to 1949 in an edit made at around 12:30pm.

Source: Screenshot via Wikipedia

Another edit was then made at 12:38pm, in which the infobox was edited to show 1946 once again, while the year in the text was left unchanged as 1949.

This has yet to be edited as of 3pm on Mar. 2.

Source: Screenshot via Wikipedia

All tickets given away in 43 minutes

Over 100,000 people joined the virtual queue with waiting times of over an hour reported.

At 12:43pm, Cathay Pacific announced that all of the tickets had been given away.

The giveaway had been slated to run from Mar. 2 to Mar. 8, according to Cathay Pacific's website.

Winners will be announced on the campaign website on Mar. 20.

Top collage via Cathay Pacific/Facebook and Wikipedia