Following the mantra of ‘Fly less to save more’, loss-hit domestic airlines have started pruning services in a bid to keep afloat. While SpiceJet has discontinued 17 daily services, Jet may do away with some of its afternoon flights. Others like Deccan are learnt to be weighing route-cuts .

SpiceJet has said it will cut flights on short-haul sectors which are largely unremunerative. These include Chennai-Bangalore, Hyderabad-Chennai, Jaipur-Ahmedabad and some services to the North East where load factors are poor.

“Cutting back on short haul flights would increase the overall load factor by 2-3 per cent and this gives a greater yield per passenger. The yield would increase by Rs 70-80 per ticket,” said Sidhant Sharma, chief executive officer of SpiceJet.

While Deccan is yet to firm up plans to cut down services, company officials say route rationalisation is definitely on the radar. “It is too soon to decide which routes we may scale down on, but rationalisation is one of the ways we are considering to deal with the current situation,” Ramki Sundaram, officiating CEO & CFO of Deccan said.