Airfares cut for 3 days

The discounted tickets need to be purchased on or before September 17 for travel till September 18. Soon after a five-day strike by pilots was called off on Sunday, Jet Airways reduced its fares by 50 per cent, forcing competitors to follow suit.

The public sector Air India dropped its fares on seven sectors and on select flights. The fare on flights IC 803 and IC 506 Delhi-Bangalore and Bangalore-Delhi, respectively, is a flat Rs 3,229 each per ticket, according to an AI release.
Go Air, too, dropped charges. The fares for the Mumbai-Delhi route of GoAir has come down from Rs 2,400 to Rs 2,061 for travel during this week.

One-way tickets on trunk routes such as Mumbai-Chennai and Mumbai-Bangalore are available in the range of Rs 1,900-2,100. Lean-hour travel in the afternoons is even cheaper at around Rs 1,800.

But those who plan to travel after September 18 need not despair as fares will not go up. According to travel portals, a ticket on the Delhi-Bangalore route costs between Rs 3,053 and Rs 3,783 for travel on September 22 compared with Rs 2,390-Rs 3,074 on September 17, if booked on September 15 on budget airlines.

As airline losses are mounting globally, the International Air Transport Association on Tuesday announced a revised financial forecast predicting airline losses at $11 billion in 2009.