Jet Airways will strengthen its hub at Amsterdam with a flight from Bengaluru effective 29thOctober 2017. This will be the fourth daily departure for the airline from Amsterdam with current departures to Mumbai, Delhi and Toronto. The airline had moved its European hub from Brussels to Amsterdam in March 2016 following an agreement with Delta-KLM-Air France combine. The airline had announced flights with A330-300 operations and had quickly ramped up to B777 operations.
From the same day, the airline will also add services connecting Chennai with Paris. Currently the airline operates to Paris from its hub – Mumbai. The airline has been operating regional international flights from both Chennai as well as Bengaluru and had recently announced Bengaluru as its third hub after Mumbai and Delhi.
Air India operates an international connector between Chennai & Delhi which carries passengers onwards to Paris. Pondicherry – a former French colony is a few hours’ drive from Chennai and contributes to sizable seasonal traffic. In its hay days the airline had connected Chennai to Brussels.
Bengaluru has seen a spike in traffic to the United States due to the booming Information Technology outsourcing business. A direct flight offering multiple destinations across USA via Amsterdam should help Jet Airways get a slice of the expanding market.
The airline has not been up-to the mark with utilization of wide body aircraft. While for a very long time the aircraft were leased out to investor Etihad Airways and also to Turkish Airlines, a few were used on domestic runs with the aircraft being idle during the off peak hours. The airline has also been under pressure on the hitherto strong Gulf sector where few wide body aircraft are deployed.
These two new flights will see additional two aircraft being utilized on long haul international sector. The airline will operate Daily flights on Bengaluru – Amsterdam and will have a Delta as well as KLM code placed on this flight. The flights to Paris from Chennai will be operated five times a week with Air France and Delta Airlines code share. Both the flights will be operated by A330.
Code Share spree
For the new routes, passengers can connect to 24 destinations in United States and 35 in Europe one-stop via Amsterdam while the Chennai – Paris flight will help connect to 21 destinations in United States apart from numerous connections on the Air France network within Europe.
The airline has been on a code share spree for the last six months. The airline which deployed wide body aircraft to Singapore – initially from Delhi and then from Mumbai seems to be hoping to cash in on the feeder traffic to fill up the additional capacity. The airline has signed code share agreement with Jetstar Asia for 11 destinations across Asia Pacific, of which 3 were a new offering. The code share was effective 26th March 2017.
Over the last six months it has signed codeshare agreement with Fiji Airways for flights to Fiji via Hong Kong and Singapore. Earlier a similar agreement was signed with HongKong airlines and last year the existing partnership with Kenya airways was expanded.
While on the eastern front the codeshare deals started falling in place after capacity expansion, the western front has seen additional deals without expansion of capacity.
In mid-April the airline announced enhancement of code share agreement with Virgin Atlantic. The code share agreement is for flights to 9 destinations in United States from London. The airline already has a codeshare cooperation with Delta Air Lines to connect on to the Delta network at London for travel to 18 destinations in the United States of America.
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