Taking competition from international airlines head on, private carrier Air Sahara on January 2 announced the sale of 2006 Delhi-London return tickets at a very low Rs 10,000 on first-come, first-served basis.

These limited tickets, which would be up for grabs from tomorrow, would be available on the re-designed website of the premier airline and would be valid for one year from the date of purchase, its President Ronojoy Dutta told reporters in New Delhi.

Air Sahara also plans to start services to Hong Kong and Bangkok and a second daily flight to Singapore in the next few months, he said, adding that it would launch these services as it inducts seven Boeing 737-800s in the next 12 months.

Asked whether the domestic fares would further decline, Dutta said: "Quite potentially, yes. The (domestic) fares should continue to fall... Not just due to the decline in jet fuel prices... We are ready for this eventuality internally.”

On the international sectors, he said the London and Singapore services were doing very well in terms of passenger load factor. Air Sahara carried 3.5 million passengers in calendar 2005 compared with about 2.8 million the previous year, Dutta said, adding that the projection for 2006 was another 15 per cent growth, especially taking into account the seven new aircraft which would be inducted this year.

To questions on the government's insistence on training pilots to use CAT-III instrument landing system to overcome fog-related problems, he said it would go ahead with imparting training to flight instructors and examiners.

"But we are continuing dialogue with government" on ways to relax the strict conditionalities prevailing on this count, he said.

( www.financialexpress.com)