Indian government-owned Air India has braced up itself to take on the competition with the private carriers in offering low-fare air tickets. Air India is facing mainly two challenges. One is low passenger demand and two the Jet-Etihad alliance. Amid these challenges, the State-owned airline has concentrated to enhance its ticket sales by stepping up its corporate travel business. And the efforts have brought results in the form of increase in load factors and yield.    

Except in May, air traffic decelerated in the past few months. This has led airlines to discount tickets by way of promotional offers.    

Cutting air ticket prices, Jet Airways put up 7,00,000 seats for sale, GoAir offered fares that were lower than regular rates by up to 50 per cent. Historically slow to react to such fare wars, Air India was pro-active with its pricing this time. All these air ticket sales were advance purchases from 14-days to 60 days before the travel date and none closer to the day of travel.    

However, to take on the competition from the private airlines, now AI has recently introduced special fares that can be booked just three days before the travel date.    

The fares have been introduced to fill flights with light loads and will help it compete with other low-cost airlines.