Dubai: Jet Airways to Commence Gulf Operations from Jan 5

Media Release

Dubai, Dec 21: Jet Airways, India's premier airline, will soon commence operations to the Gulf. Effective from Saturday January 5, 2008, Jet Airways will be India’s first private airline to start services to the Gulf with non-stop daily flights connecting India with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Kuwait will be connected to New Delhi and Kochi, - Bahrain will be connected to Mumbai and Kochi, - Doha will have flights to Mumbai and Kozhikode - and Muscat will have flights to Kozhikode and Kochi.

The main features of Jet Airways Gulf operations will be daily non-stop flights to each destination combined with world class service on the ground and in the air.

The departures and arrivals have been worked out keeping in mind passenger convenience as far as possible. Most flights from Gulf to Kochi and Kozhikode, arrive early evening to enable customers reach home during daylight hours and be home for a family dinner, even if they have to travel a couple of hours by road to reach home.  The departures from cities in Kerala are also timed so that customers can reach the airport in daylight and arrive into the Gulf city by dinner time, ready to be at work the next day.   Jet's flights from Gulf cities to Mumbai will arrive early morning to connect to domestic network within India.

Jet Airways has also officially reduced the minimum connecting time for international to domestic connections at Mumbai to two and a half hours from the earlier three hours, considering that domestic segments check-in counters are available at the International Airport itself, and also, the transfers are done from the air-side, alongside the tarmac, cutting out the public roads and without really leaving the airport.

At Jet Airways, the growth of services and network has been constant and consistent. The ultimate mission of Jet Airways, when they commenced international operations, was to easily and efficiently connect India to all parts of the world.   Now, with the commencement of Gulf operations, customers from this region will also have the Jet Airways advantage to connect to the world, via India.  Plans are also afoot to connect the Gulf to all world-wide destinations in the far East, Europe, USA and Canada and the Indian sub-continent, where Jet Airways operates to, via India.

Jet Airways' code share operations with Qantas will connect passengers to cities in Australia, over Singapore, code share with Brussels Airlines will take clients all over Europe, via Brussels and code share with American Airlines will connect many cities in the USA, over New York (JFK). Also, the whole of India opens up to flights arriving from the Gulf, into BOM and DEL.

The press release also said that the fare structure will be extremely competitive as they will have a range of fares available for sale based on the flight profile in terms of seats available at the time of buying the ticket. This will be somewhat based on the dynamic pricing policies that Jet follows on their domestic network. 

 In the introductory stage, Economy class prices start at BHD 60 for a one way ticket between Bahrain and Mumbai. The same fare is currently available between Bahrain and Cochin. Kuwait to New Delhi starts at KWD 40 for a one way ticket and Kuwait to Kochi starts at KWD 60.    For Business Class (Club Premiere), prices start at BHD 145 for Bahrain to Mumbai and BHD 155 for Bahrain to Kochi. Kuwait to New Delhi starts at KWD 145 and Kuwait to Kochi starts at KWD 155.

Fares from Qatar and Oman to India are also equally competitive. Jet will also soon offer interline fares with partner airlines in the Gulf, where customers will be able to fly from Doha to Kochi via Bahrain, or Kuwait to Kozhikode via Doha, or from Dubai or Abu-Dhabi to various destinations is India via any of their on-line points in the Gulf.

Jet Airways will introduce its world-class service on the Boeing 737-800 aircraft on these sectors, offering the highest quality of comfort, courtesy, reliability and standards of in-flight as well as ground operations, for which it has been highly acclaimed.

Operations to the U.A.E. and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are still under consideration and the Government of India, Civil Aviation, will let us know soon.
 
Three Boeing 777-300 ERs and one Airbus A330-200 have been added to the fleet over the past one month, taking the total strength to 75 aircraft. With an average fleet age of 4.7 years, the airline has one of the youngest aircraft fleet in the world. Jet Airways operates over 355 flights daily and has flown over 80 million passengers since inception in May 1993.

Jet Airways has recently been awarded 'India's leading Airline' at the Annual World Travel Awards ceremony, and was also awarded 'India's best domestic airline' at the TTG travel awards.