Jet Airways Konnect may fly international routes

Jet Airways Konnect, the two- month old no-frill carrier floated by the premier private airline Jet Airways, is evaluating routes to launch overseas services by the year-end, a top airline official said. "We are evaluating a few routes and if we decide to go ahead, it will all be within this year," Jet Airways Chief Commercial Officer Sudheer Raghavan said, indicating that these services could be launched from the upcoming winter schedule beginning October. He refused to disclose which international routes Jet Konnect was interested in but said the evaluation was being carried out on sectors in which all-economy, no-frill services would be feasible. Regarding Jet Airways, Raghavan said the legacy airline, which started its services to Saudi Arabia with the launch of Mumbai-Jeddah flight two days ago, would start flying to Riyadh from August six.

Asked whether Jet would stop flying to those foreign destinations where Jet Konnect goes, he said "all options" were being studied, including whether meals, which has to be bought on board its domestic service, should be served on its proposed international flights. He, however, maintained that "we don't want to do away with the warmth of our premier service" and the prime difference would be the all-economy configuration of the aircraft. Jet Konnect, which was launched on May 7, would have a fleet of 10 turbo-prop ATR 72-500 aircraft and nine Boeing 737s, most of them being 168 seaters, by July end. The Jet CCO, however, made it clear that in no way would the airline cut its domestic operations to start services on some profitable international routes. By October this year, Jet Konnect would begin operating on all routes it has planned to take over from its full service parent airline, he said.

Jet Konnect was floated with planes and routes earlier operated by Jet Airways, which, as a full service airline, was experiencing high operational costs and low yields. The two-class configured planes of Jet were converted into all-economy seaters to begin Jet Konnect operations which were "breaking even" with food being sold on board and less number of cabin crew members on these flights, he said.Within a span of two months, number of destinations operated by Jet Konnect grew enormously, roughly accounting for half of the full-service carrier's operations, Raghavan said. Konnect now operates 129 flights a day compared with about 270 of Jet Airways. By October this year, another about 30 domestic flights would be added to the Jet Konnect network, he said. Domestic passenger load of Jet Airways on several sectors, which were averaging 50-55 per cent, increased to over 70 per cent when these services were switched over to that of Jet Konnect, Raghavan said.