It is purely my fault that I did not take this seriously before and notify you guys. Maybe we can also blame Air India for not going to town about this sale. But, we still have time to make up for it!
Air India is selling tickets anywhere around India at low-fare carrier prices uptil January 15, 2014. I was looking to book some tickets for later in the year, considering I am just about starting to plan my travel for the year, and I came across this promotion.
Here is a comparison for BOM-DEL for a long-dated ticket, which I booked for Rs. 8200 on Air India for later this year and tickets are supposed to be their cheapest, because I am booking more than 6 months out. Of course, if you book via the OTAs such as Cleartrip, they add a transaction fee on top, but if you book directly with Air India, no such transaction charges are levied.
And then, this was the Jet Airways website, for the same dates, selling me a round trip ticket for INR 11668.
And for the purpose of comparison, I looked at Cleartrip which was going to give me fares for all the other airlines (Indigo, Spicejet, etc), which were selling at the same price point as Air India.
I tried looking for various dates, and these look like 90 day booking fares, so if you book 3 months out, you should be able to get yourselves these fares. So, if you have holiday plans with your kids in April–June 2014 or any other fixed weekends you’d like to travel, maybe it is a good idea to lock in those tickets now.
And yes, if you have the Air India SBI Card, you get upto 20 points per 100 Rs. spent on booking your tickets with Air India on the website.
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I think the key here is that AI does not charge transaction fees. With the fees running unto 300 per ticket, it does make a difference.
@Shan, also important to note that they are pricing themselves at the levels of low cost airlines and not their full service competition.