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)