They are offering tickets at half the stated price on selected routes, claiming it is a necessary move to prevent near-empty planes from taking to the skies.

But the response of China's aviation administrators has been to tighten regulations on ticket discounting. They vow to harshly punish any agent or company flouting the rules.

Special inspection teams are to be dispatched nationwide in the hope of catching agents in the act of selling discounted tickets.

In a notice attained by media yesterday, the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) defined law-breakers as those "selling tickets lower than the minimum price which CAAC announced for major domestic air routes."

The CAAC will co-operate with the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration of Taxation, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the State Development Planning Commission in cracking down on illegal discounting. Cheap tickets are being sold by certificated ticket agents, which have close relations with State-owned airlines and can get low-priced tickets directly.

The notice said local airlines should immediately check the prices being offered by their ticket sales agents and halt any instances of discounting.

And if the special inspection teams find local ticket agents continue to sell cheap tickets illegally, then both airlines and their agents would be punished by judicial penalties - not just industry regulations.

A spot check of ticket agents will be carried out soon. Those agents without the correct certificates will be shut down and their sales income confiscated.

China currently has around 5,000 ticket sales agents, most of them operating without valid certificates, an investigation by CAAC revealed.

Though CAAC has vowed to stop illegal ticket discounting since late 1998, local airlines have sold low-priced tickets to fill passenger cabins.

But industry analysts believed the industry was struggling to adapt to the market economy.

(China Daily June 20, 2002)