Travelers from Shanghai to Beijing, Chongqing and Xia'men can still get 50 percent discounts on air tickets for the upcoming weeklong National Day holiday, thanks to a price war triggered by some domestic airlines, Shanghai Morning Post reported today.
Travelers usually have to pay the full price of air tickets on September 30 and October 1 every year. "Competition is very fierce, so cheap air tickets are still available, with airfares to Beijing cut by 50 percent on September 30 and October 1, and those to Chongqing are half price on October 2," said a spokesman with a local airline ticket outlet.
Continuously-surging fuel prices have caused domestic airliners a loss during the first half of this year, with China Southern Airlines reporting a deficit of 800 million yuan (US$100 million) from January to June, and China Eastern Airlines in the red by 1.4 billion yuan.
Domestic air-carriers have to join in the price war to attract more travel agencies, tourists and capture more of the market share, said an industry analyst.

How low can they go?

Stay at a five-star hotel for only RM1 a night? Save RM11,000 on a business class flight? An excited KEE HUA CHEE trawls the Net for super-bargains.

EACH time I read the advertisements of a certain home-grown airline that offers rock-bottom air tickets, I key in only to discover that they have all been sold out! So I always end up being asked to pay a much higher fare than hoped for.

My lamentations reached my Net-savvy friends in faraway London who fed me uplifting tales of ridiculously cheap fares and hotel rates due to human error. They say that FlyerTalk.com, Travelocity, Airfarewatchdog.com and FareAlert.net. are the sites to visit for the best bargains on the Net.

A business class fare of US$33 (RM120) was once quoted on FlyerTalk.com for an Alitalia flight from Toronto to Larnaca, Cyprus.

Five Countries Plan Hike in Airfare Tax to Buy Drugs for AIDS ...

France, Brazil, Britain, Norway and Chile announced a tax on airline tickets to raise $300 million dollars to buy AIDS drugs for patients who cannot afford them.

Representatives from the five nations, including Presidents Jacques Chirac of France and Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, were present for the announcement at the UN. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and former US President Bill Clinton also attended.

Annan called the initiative to tax airline tickets an "innovative" way to raise money for AIDS patients.

"It can provide a continuing source of funding," Annan said. "It is a real and immediate tool to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria."

The plan, known under the acronym UNITAID and based in Geneva, can help pay for treatment of 100,000 children living with the AIDS virus and another 100,000 who have become resistant to the antiretroviral AIDS drugs.