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ounting concerns over cut-throat price wars between domestic airline operators — amid soaring operational costs — have forced the government to intervene by lifting the minimum fares airlines can charge their customers.

Although passenger numbers have grown by double digits annually, carriers have been jostling to attract passengers on busy routes, which serve as the main battle ground for airlines.

The Transportation Ministry’s director general for air transportation, Agus Santoso, said that after several rounds of discussion, the government had agreed to revise the minimum airfare for economy class.

“We have agreed on a number. [The new regulation] will be issued on Monday,” he said on Thursday, without elaborating on the new price floor.

The minimum price was last revised in 2016 to cushion the impact of rising fuel costs and fluctuation in the rupiah exchange value.

The new intervention comes as the Transportation Ministry suspended the operations of Kalstar Aviation, a small airline based in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, late last month for the firm’s failure to meet technical and financial standards.

The airline has been reaping a thin profit margin by selling tickets at low prices in the hope of achieving a sufficient load factor.

National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia has floated the idea of increasing base fares for economy tickets earlier this year, citing a rise in the aviation fuel price from around 38 US cents per liter last year to almost 50 cents this year.

After all, the airline has seen its fuel-related operational costs soar by 36.5 percent to US$571.1 million in the first half of this year, contributing to $138 million in losses during that period.

The airline has attempted to sell cheaper tickets at its annual Garuda Indonesia Travel Fair (GATF) to match the prices of low-cost carrier AirAsia Indonesia.

The head of the Indonesian National Air Carriers Association’s (INACA) scheduled flight division, Bayu Sutanto, said there was an agreement between the government and the association on the revision of the minimum fare.

“We have asked for an increase in the base fare, but not in the ceiling fare. We expect to see an increase in the base fare for the 15 busiest routes, because there’s a price war tendency, where the price can even go far below the base fare,” he said.

The busiest routes include those connecting Jakarta and Surabaya in East Java as well as Jakarta and Makassar in South Sulawesi.

Under the current regulation, the base fare is 30 percent of the ceiling fare for each route. For example, the base fare for a flight from Jakarta to Surabaya is Rp 412,000 ($30.51), while the ceiling fare is Rp 1.37 million.

INACA has proposed an increase in the base fare to 40 percent of the ceiling fare.

Bayu said that on busy routes the operational costs had been rising in line with various costs aside from fuel, including airport-related costs.

Apart from that, he said, airlines were also struggling with lower load factors this year because of oversupply in passenger seats, as airlines have rapidly increased their capacity.

The Transportation Ministry has estimated that the country sees an average of four new aircraft enter service each month.

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the number of domestic air passengers increased to 58.4 million in the January to August period of this year, up 11 percent from the same period last year. The number of international passengers, meanwhile, increased by 14.11 percent to 11.1 million.