New Jet Airways Flights from Southeast Asian Hubs Benefit Australian Passengers

Jet Airways marked another milestone last week by inaugurating direct flights from New Delhi and Kolkata to Bangkok on the same day, with the Thai capital is the burgeoning carrier’s 50th destination.

[Pictured: Hemant Narayanan, Account Manager, Jet Airways and Anna Cyjeticanin, Product Development Executive, Jet Airways are enthusiastic about the increase in services to India from Southeast Asian ports.]

The new generation Boeing 737-800 aircraft used to operate the daily flights on both sectors are configured with 24 Club Premiere seats and 126 seats in economy.

These new flights are not code shared with another carrier but we are looking at a commercial alliance possibly with Thai International, said Hemant Narayanan, Account Manager, Jet Airways, Sydney.

Only Jet Airways services from Singapore to India are operated on a code share basis with QANTAS and existing daily Mumbai and Chennai services were supplemented last month with the launch of a daily Singapore/New Delhi flight, he said.

The New Delhi service is the best connection to the capital for Australian passengers because of the short transit time in Singapore, he said.

Jet Airways is using three metro hubs in India: New Delhi to serve the north, Mumbai for the west and Chennai for the south.  (Chennai and Kuala Lumpur are also connected with a daily Jet Airways service.)

Plans are progressing to launch more flights into Asia this year with Shanghai and Hong Kong set to be the next international destinations for the 14 year old multi award winning airline.  It’s not yet finalised if the two Chinese cities will be connected to New Delhi and/or Mumbai as negations are still underway, he said.

The Jet Airways international network is expected to further expand to include South America and Africa in the long term.  Australia is not yet on the radar, said Narayanan.

Rapid expansion of the airline is envisaged as the first of 10 new A330 aircraft ordered by the Jet Airways are delivered this year.

Meanwhile Jet Airways has introduced a “creative innovation” at metro airports in India with the introduction of mobile check-in kiosks.  This service means, in effect, that that the check-in ‘counter’ comes to the passenger saving time they stand in the queue.

Available to all passengers, the service is another first for Jet Airways, said Narayanan.  It’s a passenger pleasing innovation that Australians travelling with us on our extensive and still expanding network of domestic services within India will appreciate, he said.

The Jet Airways announcement of more flights to India from Bangkok and Singapore comes with the release of India’s record setting arrival figures for 2006.

India achieved a significant growth in terms of foreign tourist arrivals during last year with figures advancing from 3.92 million in 2005 to 4.43 million in 2006, an increase of 14.2%.

Foreign exchange earnings from tourism have also shown a phenomenal growth from US$5.7 billion in 2005 to US$ 6.5 billion in 2006.  This represents an increase of 14.6%.

Report by Thomas E. King, TravelMole’s Travel & Lifestyle Editor