Air India offers economy class tickets at Rs.99 each

New Delhi, Jan 30: In a new offer, India's flag carrier Air India has pegged its economy class fare at Rs.99 (excluding Rs.3,024 as fuel surcharge) on all domestic sectors till Feb 28, an airline official said.

Besides this, it has launched another scheme under which travellers booking tickets 21 days in advance will also be offered tickets at Rs.99 each. For them, the scheme will be valid even after Feb 28.

For its business class travellers, Air India already has a scheme till February-end under which the passenger's spouse can travel paying only the fuel surcharge and airport user development charge.

Fares were last reduced Dec 30, when the state-owned airline slashed base fares up to 82 percent on several sectors, and private carriers by at least 50 percent.

Air India trailed private carriers Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines in terms of passenger load last year.

Jet Airways, together with its low-cost airline JetLite, was India's largest domestic air services operator ferrying some 12.01 million passengers and commanding a market share of 29.5 percent, according to data of the civil aviation ministry released this month.

Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines, along with its budget carrier Kingfisher Red, was next, flying 11.26 million passengers to capture a 27.6 percent market share.

In comparison, Air India continued to lose market share in the domestic sector and flew just 6.63 million passengers, and accounted for a market share of 16.3 percent. It had a 19-percent market share in 2007.

Earlier this month, Jet introduced a scheme where business class tickets booked 21 days in advance were priced 30-35 percent lower than the regular fares.

--IANS