After a Shanghai-bound China Eastern plane crash last Sunday in Inner mongolia, air carriers in Shanghai have rushed to offer deep price cuts to attract travelers on the concern that the air crash last Sunday would frighten away travelers to other destinations.
Yesterday, a local ticketing agent, Shanghai Buyecheng Travel Ticketing Center, slashed the price of a flight from Shanghai to Beijing by up to 80 percent to 230 yuan (US$28), the deepest-ever price on the busiest air route in Shanghai.
Add the additional compulsory airport construction fee of 50 yuan, and the flight costs 280 yuan in total, still 14 percent cheaper than the railway service of 327 yuan.
At other local air ticket agencies, tickets for the Shanghai- Beijing flight are offered at 55 to 65 percent discounts on the face price of 1,130 yuan.
The price cut is aimed at boosting business after the crash, analysts pointed out, while winter is already a flat season for air travel.
But they expected the deep cuts would not last beyond two or three days because the cuts would represent huge losses for the airlines.
Citing the 80 percent discount as an example, the analysts said the air companies could only recover 20,000 yuan in ticket sales for the 40,000-yuan operating cost of a Boeing 737 flight, if the flight is fully occupied.
Last Sunday, a Shanghai-bound China Eastern passenger plane crashed into a frozen lake in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, within seconds of takeoff, killing all 53 people aboard and a worker on the ground.