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NEW DELHI: Airlines are cutting fares like never before to fill up planes in the ongoing lean travel season which will last till early October.

On Saturday, Jet Airways put on sale a whopping 7 lakh domestic travel seats with fares starting at Rs 1,777. The sale will last till next Friday and will be for travel from the day after. Jet is offering fares in three slabs — Rs 1,777 for short slabs; Rs 2,777 for medium and Rs 3,777 for long domestic sectors.

This offer comes on heels of IndiGo recently coming out with low all-inclusive 90-day advance fares starting at Rs 2,107 (for short sectors like Delhi-Lucknow) to Rs 4,376 for long sectors like Delhi-Chennai.

The travel industry is also seeing Jet Airways’ latest offer as an attempt by it to bridge the gap with domestic market leader IndiGo which has an almost 30% market share with Naresh Goyal-owned airline behind by almost 7%.

Taking a potshot at Jet’s offer, IndiGo chief Aditya Ghosh said: "Seems like the competition is throwing a party to celebrate our seventh anniversary tomorrow (August 4) with their seven lakh seat sale. Lucky number seven is contagious."

The soon-to-be-funded-by-Etihad Jet and profitable IndiGo’s corporate rivalry may be heating up, but passengers will have the last laugh. Airlines say passengers can book early for travel in the peak October-January months as spot fares then are going to be very high. Air India, SpiceJet and GoAir are also offering low fares to overcome lean season blues.

"Airlines are offering low fares currently even when operating costs are very high. Jet fuel price was hiked by over 6% two days back. Aircraft occupancy is very low and airlines are taking drastic steps to get funds through fire sales like these to meet increased operating costs," said an airline official.

Domestic air travel has been constantly falling in past few quarters and this year alone has seen several attempts by airlines to stimulate the market by offering low fares. In January, SpiceJet offered 10 lakh seats for Rs 2,013 and sold 7 lakh of them. This was followed a month later by Jet which offered almost 20 lakh seats at low fares and that included low spot fares too.

Last month, IndiGo cut fares by almost half. The latest fare war launched by Jet is a seven-day advance fare as people can buy them till next Friday and fly from Saturday.

Following Jet’s latest salvo, other airlines are also expected to join the fare war and offer mouth-watering prices. So as airlines fear a deep-in-red July-September quarter, passengers can have the last laugh by booking early to fly cheap in the otherwise expensive travel season from October.