Promotional fares work wonders for local airlines in Feb

New Delhi: Promotional fares offered by domestic airlines have paid off. Air carriers have seen an improvement in the number of passengers in February. Passengers took advantage of the discounted fares offered by airlines from January this year. By the time it was discontinued in February first week, passengers had already blocked their seats in advance. As a result, the number of air passengers increased, an executive with the low-cost airline IndiGo said.
Airlines started offering discounts in January, following a sharp fall in aviation fuel prices. This resulted into airfares dropping nearly 50% on various routes, including Delhi-Mumbai. Almost all airlines started offering promotional fares, taking tariffs to significantly low levels. Some of the airlines also launched Re 1 and Rs 100 basic fares (exclusive of fuel surcharge and taxes) on select routes, the executive, who didn’t wish to be named, said.
The two major low-cost carriers, IndiGo and SpiceJet, improved their market shares in February 2009. IndiGo’s market share grew by 13.2% and SpiceJet by 12.4%. In February, last year, their respective shares were 9.9% and 10.6%. Among full-service carriers, market-share of state-owned Air India and Kingfisher Airlines also increased. Kingfisher Airlines had a market share of 27.1% in February 2009. Jet and JetLite’s market share in the same period was 25.4%.
Domestic carriers are expected to register a combined loss of nearly $2 billion in 2008-09 on account of high fuel price in the first half of the current financial year.
14/03/09 Economic Times

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Mar 2009