Airlines operating services between Beijing, Shanghai and cities between the two cities have been scrambling for ways to prevent passengers from moving to the new high-speed line that will start operation on 30 June, reported China Daily.

Those measures include higher discounts, as well as free train connections and shuttle buses to and from airports. The newspaper claimed that the fare for an air ticket from Beijing to Shanghai on 30 June started from as low as Rmb368, which is 67 per cent less than the full price ticket.

“The new line is sure to drive many passengers from airplanes to trains in the short term, which will lead to a decrease in air ticket prices,” said Yang Wei, senior director of the air tickets business department at travel search engine Qunar.com. He predicted that airlines will further cut prices to meet the fierce competition from the high-speed trains.

Airports in cities along the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway are providing quicker check-in services to further shore up passenger numbers. For example, the airport in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, has set up special check-in services for passengers heading to Beijing. Here, the typical check-in time for passengers to Beijing has been reduced to about five minutes compared with 30 minutes previously, according to one airport staff member.

Despite these measures, it is quite likely that the new railway will have a significant impact on the number and frequency of connections, in the same way that the opening of the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway in 2009 reduced the number of flights between those two cities.