JET Airways, India’s premier international airline, has boosted its international network with the addition of two daily flights between Dammam and Mumbai, its fourth daily service from India to Saudi Arabia.
The airline currently operates daily flights from Mumbai to Riyadh and Jeddah and from Thiruvananthapuram to Dammam.
The two direct daily flights will make the airline the first private Indian airline to operate 100 daily flights to international destinations across the globe.
Coming out of a strong 2010, the new route is expected to further strengthen the airline’s position in the Middle East market.
“In 2010, the company announced a profit of $48.7 million for the third quarter ending December 2010, with traffic growth of 15.3 per cent, revenue growth of 20 per cent, improved yields and an expanded network,” said Abdulrahman Albusaidy, group executive officer for Jet Airways.
While traffic on the international network grew by 19 per cent versus 2009, seat factor saw an 81 per cent growth on international sectors. “Today, we serve 24 international destinations including Milan and Johannesburg. There are also plans to boost frequencies on existing routes. On the domestic network, we achieved a seat factor of 77 per cent on a much higher capacity than what was offered in 2009,” added Albusaidy.
Besides the new route to Dammam, Jet Airways also launched a third daily flight between Mumbai and Dubai. The airline also operates daily direct flights to Dubai from Chennai, Delhi and Hyderabad, which makes the additional flight from Mumbai to Dubai the sixth daily direct service on this sector.
The driving force behind the success of Jet Airways and its rise in the domestic Indian market has been its consistent high standard of service, reliability, continuous focus on service innovation and wide network.
According to Albusaidy, there has been an increased number of high-level professionals travelling between the Gulf and India augmenting the traditional VFR, semi-skilled employees and medical traffic.
“The Gulf is strategic for Jet Airways’ long term growth, in terms of revenue growth and diversification of sources of income, it provides feed to our large domestic network and our international networks beyond India and earns significant cargo revenues ex India to the Gulf. The significant infrastructure related projects in the Gulf present good growth prospects for the future,” he added.
“There are further plans to add eight new daily flights between India and the Gulf bringing our tally to 29 daily flights from the present 21 from the region. We also plan to expand our network in the Far East, Europe and the domestic market coupled with an expansion in our fleet.
“We view travel agents as our partners and we operate on the principle of win-win. They account for more than 70 per cent of our revenues so we recognise them as our most valuable customer and work very closely with them to meet our mutual needs and aspirations.”