Even as price of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) have moved north, low passenger load

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factors have compelled domestic carriers to offer special incentives.

JetLite — the low-cost arm of the Jet Airways — on Tuesday announced new low fares across 24 domestic sectors. Under the plan, the airline will offer 13 per cent lower fares on routes including Delhi-Hyderabad at

Rs 4,170 on 10-day advance bookings.

The new fares will be effective from Wednesday and will exclude airport development fee, user development fee (UDF) and passenger service fee components. The passengers will also have to pay an additional transaction fee, over and above the other charges.

“The new fares provide our customers an opportunity to avail additional value over and above JetLite’s prevailing low fares by making a round trip purchase,” Raj Sivakumar, vice-president (revenue management) Jet Airways and JetLite said.

Another low-cost carrier, SpiceJet, announced special return fare offers across all sectors. Under the offer, the passengers can save up to Rs 500 on their return bookings.

The national carrier Air India had recently introduced the advance purchase excursion (apex) fares on 35 domestic sectors including Indore, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Khajuraho, Kullu, Leh, Lucknow. For a 10-day advance booking, the tickets cost Rs 2,694 and for 20-days, the airline is charging Rs 2,494 excluding UDF.

The offers from Jet and SpiceJet are despite the fact that the airlines have announced a Rs 200-300 hike in their ticket prices on account of a 6.7 per cent increase in jet fuel prices. Industry players said that the special offers would continue as the airlines were trying to push up passenger load factors. “Every airline has its own strategy. Our strategy at present is to keep our load factors, seat occupancy up,” Jitendra Bhargava, the Air India spokesperson said.

The load factor for domestic carriers dipped to around 65 per cent in March from 73 per cent in February. AI witnessed the lowest seat factor at 57 per cent in March against private carriers such as Jet Airways, Kingfisher, which had a seat factor of 60.6 per cent and 60.9 per cent, respectively.