Dubai flights, Airlines to Dubai

Jet Airways, India’s leading private commercial airline, has launched a new economy class service in a move to cushion itself from the tough competition posed by a growing array of budget carriers.

The new budget carrier, called Jet Airways Konnect, will offer fares lower by  up to 20 per cent compared to legacy carriers, said Shakir Kantawala, General Manager, Dubai and Northern Emirates. Konnect, which is expected to focus on the Indian sector for the time being, is designed to meet the needs of the fast growing low fare segment, said Kantawala. “Konnect offers a no-frills, economy class service where guests will be offered attractive and competitive low fares on specific routes within India.”  “The launch of Konnect will surely help our customer residing in the UAE and Gulf to plan short trips and visit more friends and relatives across India, when they go home this summer,” Kantawala said.

Jet Airways currently operates four daily flights from Dubai to India, — two to Mumbai and one each to New Delhi and Chennai. Jet Airways Konnect offers various flight options out of these cities. “There continues to be latent demand for a quality, all-economy service on several key domestic routes. The launch of tour low-cost flights is in response to the same,” he said.

Kantawala said in response to strong customer demand, effective June 13, the new all-economy airline would enhance its network to include 30 new flights to its current pan-India network of 62 daily flights. Currently, it links several destinations across India, including Kochi, Pune, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bhopal, Amritsar, Jorhat, Agartala and Guwahati with five major metros — Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Chennai.

Bookings can be made and tickets can be purchased through any travel agent, Jet Airways office, or the Jet Airways website.

Source : Khaleej Times

Dubai-based Emirates airline has provided affirmation to the growing faith in the India growth story, deciding to add as many as 22 flights per week between now and December in its India operations.

That would take the airline’s weekly operations in India to 185 flights from the present level of 163 flights. Officials said the airlines’ enhanced connectivity was expected to support India’s ambitious plan to attract 100 million travellers in 2010.

Emirates’ vice president for India and Nepal, Orhan Abbas told ET that the additional flights would be from Ahmedabad, Chennai
, Kolkatha, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram, and that the new flights would be added between June and December in a phased manner to touch 185 flights per week by the end of the year. The sharpest increase in flights will be in Kozhikode, which will see a near doubling of operations, when it gets 11 flights per week by December as against the 6 weekly flights now.

“We have always been bullish on India and it remains so. The performance in the Indian market has been good, and 10.8% of our revenues are from the Indian Ocean-West Asia region”, Mr Abbas said.

The Emirates group had recently reported its 21st consecutive year of net profit. The group’s net profit of $ 406 million for 2008-09 was down 72% from the previous year’s $ 1.45 billion, primarily because of the record fuel prices in the first six months of the year and the global slowdown. However, the group’s revenues of $ 12.6 billion in 2008-09 represented a 10.4% growth over the $ 11.4 billion in the previous year.

Emirates Airline and Group chairman and chief executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum had said that although there was a 72% dip in net profit, “under the circumstances this is a satisfactory result”.

Commenting on the slowdown’s effect, Orhan Abbas said it had affected all sectors. “The crunch has affected all, but we see India as one of the best growth markets even now and are positive on the Indian market”, he said.

With regard to the high oil prices over the past year, Mr Abbas said recent months had seen oil prices far lower than what it was a year ago, and that the airline was “always trying to be efficient in its operations”.

Emirates’ seat capacity across its India operations has moved up from 44,393 seats in October 2008 to 48,470 seats at present. This number will increase substantially when the airline adds 22 more flights in its India operations.

Source : The Economic Times