A-I today announced a two-fare structure for the Mumbai-Delhi sector under which the economy ticket would be sold for Rs 3,045 between 8 am and 8 pm, and Rs 2,655 between 8 pm to 8 am. Earlier, when both Jet and Sahara reduced their fares by Rs 1,000, Indian Airlines had retaliated by slashing its fare from Rs 5,111 to Rs 3,800. Jet immediately took steps to match IA's fare. At Rs 3,800, Indian Airlines had already beaten the Rajdhani Express AC I class fare of Rs 4,180, but now, the night fares introduced by A-I have made air travel affordable to the middle class too.

While airline officials have been taken aback by the latest discounts offered by A-I, its official spokesperson Jitendra Bhargava justified the same andmaintained that the airline was not in any competition with others as it did not operate exclusive flights on the domestic sector. ``We are operating all the domestic legs as part of international operations and since we have large uplift of passengers out of Delhi, we also accommodate the domestic passengers on these flights i.e. the passengers who will just fly A-I for its domestic leg and not go out of the country,'' Bhargava explained.

A-I is operating 23 flights out of Mumbai to Delhi per week of which 12 are operated with Boeing 747s. As many as 15 of the 23 flights operate between 6 pm and 8.30 pm.