The downtrend in the aviation industry does not seem to have dampened growth plans of at least one play - Emirates, which unveiled plans to increase both flights and capacity from Dubai to Sydney this week.

Emirates' Richard Vaughan, newly appointed global commercial operations division senior vice-president announced its three-times a week superjumbo A380 service from Dubai, Sydney and Auckland would fly daily from 1 May. He added that Emirates had no intention of cutting workforce like Qantas.

Vaughan said Emirates had been in the country since 1996 operating 63 flights a week to Australia. He added that the company has made a huge commitment to Australia and spent much time, effort and money promoting flights to Australia.

He said that the company would not be deterred by a few hiccups in the industry adding that their forward bookings were healthy and the airline presently an average load of 80 per cent capacity.

Meanwhile the airfare war hotted up this week with 80-per cent discounts on selected international flights announced by Malaysia Airlines. Eight major airlines have clashed in the fare war which triggered Qantas' move on Tuesday to lay off staff and to ground staff.

Qantas sought to scotch speculation of low-cost subsidiary Jetstar taking over a big chunk of its operations in WA in a bid to cut costs.

The fare war was set off with Singapore Airlines' announcing on 3 April that it would offer 50 per cent discounts to 82 destinations.

Qantas responded with cheaper flights to London and Singapore only and Emirates followed suit with with deeper discounts. It offered discounts to 22 destinations in Europe and 14 in the Middle East.

A similar war is playing out on the domestic front with Qantas, Virgin Blue, Tiger Airways and Skywest Airlines in the fray.

Skywest Airlines has moved in particularly aggressively with a variety of fares between destinations from and to Perth but also between regional centres in the last two months.

The fare war is an outcome of the dramatic drop in passenger numbers with Singapore Airlines and Quantas particularly badly hit. Singapore Airlines has seen its passengers decline 20 per cent in February while Qantas suffered a 16.2 per cent drop in passenger numbers.

With Qantas is facing a battle on its home turf and Emirates refusing to reduce its flights to Australia, despite an industry-wide fall in passenger numbers aviation experts a fare war is on with experts speculating how it will play out. According to an industry expert Qantas would have to go in for a significant restructuring of its operation if the downturn in the industry continues for more than six months.

As the global recession takes a heavy toll of passenger numbers, Qantas' is hoping that other competing players would blink and reduce flights to shore up route profitability. At the moment though, that does not seem to be happening.