Jet Airways

The airline is already the biggest player in the domestic market—having successfully weathered the turbulence in domestic aviation—and is now preparing to conquer foreign skies.

Jet airways was incorporated as an air taxi operator on April 1, 1992 in Mumbai and started commercial airline operations in May next year with a fleet of four Boeing 737-300 aircraft. It became a scheduled airline on January 4, 1995 and commenced international operations with flights to Sri Lanka in March 2004.

Owned by Naresh Goyal’s Tailwinds, the airline has around 10,000 employees on its rolls. According to the latest figures, Jet Airways’ current share of India’s domestic aviation market has increased to over 40 per cent from less than 27 per cent recorded early last year. Today, Jet Airways operates over 380 flights daily to over 59 domestic destinations and boasts of being the first private airline from India to fly to international destinations. The airline operates daily international flights to Colombo, Kathmandu, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and London (Heathrow). In the latter part of last year, Jet Airways started to fly to Toronto and to New York JFK via Brussels. The airline is also considering commencing flights to North America from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Amritsar and Kolkata apart from Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

The airline’s Gulf services include flights to Bahrain and Oman (Muscat, Doha and Kuwait). Dubai and Riyadh services are likely to commence in July 08 even as Jet Airways plans to set up a hub at Shanghai Pudong International Airport to serve transpacific routes to San Francisco, Vancouver and Los Angeles. Subsequently, it also plans to fly to Beijing, Guangzhou and Macau. Only recently, Jet Airways became the first private Indian carrier to fly to Hong Kong. The service to Hong Kong was launched from Mumbai. The airline also plans to add its Kuala Lumpur service from Mumbai shortly.

Today, Jet Airways is believed to enjoy a relatively low cost base by international standards. While lower wages of its personnel compared to those in the West could to some extent be a contributory factor, it’s Jet Airways’ ability to sweat its assets that has helped the airline lower costs. Without compromising on quality, the airline has successfully managed to extract the maximum utilisation out of its aircraft fleet by minimising turnaround time between flights—similar to the leading European/North American low-cost, no frills carriers. This has partly helped it to offset the high cost of airport infrastructure and Aviation Turbine Fuel cost in India.