GoAir chief Jeh Wadia in New Delhi on Friday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, March 31: Giving a new twist to the discount war, GoAir today offered to pay double the difference if a customer can get a ticket cheaper than the airline’s on any sector.

GoAir chief Jeh Wadia said, “If the price paid for tickets in a competing airline is lower than GoAir’s, we will adjust the difference between its fare and ours as credit, provided the passenger decides to fly GoAir.”

“The airline will also reimburse the cost of cancellation done immediately as credit, which can be used to buy GoAir tickets,” he added.

However, the novel offer elicited a mixed response from other airlines.

An Indian Airlines director, refusing to be named, said, “This could result in a bloodbath.” But SpiceJet feels “GoAir’s fleet is limited to two aircraft, the offer won’t affect us ... it doesn’t compete on most routes”.

However, Wadia does compete on the crucial Delhi-Mumbai route and the offer could see a “bloodbath” at least on that trunk route.

Analyst Sudatta Sengupta feels once the GoAir fleet grows, this kind of an offer cannot be sustained. “It is just too costly ... ultimately it will be just a gimmick to grab a pie on Delhi-Mumbai route,” Sengupta said.

Wadia said GoAir’s tickets are in the price range of Rs 999 and Rs 2,999. However, the Delhi-Mumbai route had a range of Rs 999 to Rs 4,999. Sengupta said the new offer will see a “new fare war on the Mumbai-Delhi route at least, but that too will be temporary and should end by the holiday season of May-June”.

The GoAir fleet is expected to be beefed up by December 2006 when it will get Airbus 320s and then again in 2008 when it will get about a dozen more of the same model.

The airline project, envisioned by Nusli Wadia, whose main business has been in textiles, is being headed by his younger son Jehangir (Jeh). Funds for the Rs 150-crore project have been routed through SeaWind Investments, a subsidiary of the Bombay Burmah Trading Co, an old Wadia enterprise.

The airline has been launched as a no-frills one and, unlike Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines, it has no in-flight entertainment.

Jeh was made the airline chief after he successfully set up the Integrated Clinical Research Services, a clinical trials company, Paradiso, a music firm, and Virtual Education, an e-learning enterprise.