A travel agency in east China's Shandong Province has been fined 150,000 yuan
(US$19,180) by the local government for selling air tickets for one
yuan (13 US cents) each.
The Jinan Price Bureau said in a notice that Jinan Spring
Holiday Travel Agency had broken the regulations on selling
discounted air tickets by the National Development and Reform
Commission and the General Administration of Civil Aviation of
China (CAAC).
Jinan Spring Holiday Travel Agency and its parent company, the
budget airline Spring, put more than 400 one-yuan tickets on the
market on Nov. 28 and they sold out in three days.
The tickets were for flights between Jinan and Shanghai from
Nov. 30 to Dec. 10 and accounted for 10 percent of all the
seats.
The national regulation dictates that airlines can only offer
discounts of up to 45 percent on standard air tickets. But the
travel agency argued that the regulation did not specify whether it
referred to every ticket sold or the total number of tickets sold
by the airline.
The travel agency plan to plead their case with the local
government and ask for the fine to be revoked.
Shanghai-based budget carrier Spring Airlines launched its
maiden flight in July last year, becoming the first airline to
announce a cheap-price strategy in China.
(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2006)