Air India on Wednesday joined the fare war unleashed by various domestic carriers, offering special fares and discounts of up to 40 per cent on one-way regular fares on domestic flights.
Travel portals showed that Air India was, in fact, offering the lowest fares on most of the major sectors. For example, an economy class one-way ticket on the Delhi-Mumbai route for mid-April was priced at Rs. 3,201 by Air India, Rs. 3,340 by IndiGo, Rs. 3,350 by Jet Airways and Rs. 4,426 by SpiceJet.
On the Delhi-Chennai sector, Air India’s ticket costs Rs. 3,701, IndiGo’s Rs. 3,840, Jet Airways’ Rs. 3,850, Jet Konnect’s Rs. 4,008 and SpiceJet’s Rs. 4,714. A ticket on the Delhi-Kolkata route costs Rs. 3,201 on Air India, Rs. 3,241 on IndiGo, Rs. 4,662 on SpiceJet and Rs. 4,663 on Jet Konnect. On the Delhi-Hyderabad route, Air India's ticket was priced Rs. 3,201, IndiGo’s Rs. 3,290, Jet’s Rs. 3,350 and SpiceJet’s Rs. 4,641.
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Earlier in the day, chairman and managing director Rohit Nandan had said Air India was watching the situation and would respond after taking a complete view of the fare cut development.
It all started with Jet Airways offering 20 lakh seats at Rs. 2250 for travel till the year-end. Budget carriers SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo quickly followed suit. Asked if the fare war could hit the bottom line of the already troubled airline, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said: “We don’t regulate air fares. We are setting up a cell to monitor the fares, but monitoring is different from regulating.”