The Hindu : Business : Maiden flight to Kuala Lumpur, a landmark event for Jet Airways

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 20, 2005

Business

Business

Maiden flight to Kuala Lumpur, a landmark event for Jet Airways

P. Jacob

This is the company's fourth foray outside the country

KUALA LUMPUR: Jet Airways made a smooth touchdown here on Thursday, marking its inaugural flight on a lucrative route linking India with Malaysia, the country with a large Indian diaspora.

The Boeing 737-800, which left Chennai on Wednesday night at 11 p.m., landed here at 5.30 a.m. — a flight lasting 3 hours and 20 minutes.

As the aircraft taxied along what appeared to be a pre-dawn carpet of fireflies — landing lights in different hues — the steel-and-glass Kuala Lumpur International Airport, one of the world's largest airports, completed in 1998, was waking up to the glow of the 47th international airline to fly in there. It was also the first privately run Indian airline to do so.

The aircraft, with a capacity of 140 passengers including 16 in business class (and with eight cabin crew members) flew virtually full. It was piloted by Captain O. S. Santaram and Captain D. Balaraman.

Speaking at a brief welcome ceremony with a characteristically Malay touch, right in the arrivals lounge, Sanjay Pande, India's Deputy High Commissioner here said the new flight link constituted a boost to India-Malaysia relations and a new dimension to India's `Look East' policy. And later in the afternoon, at a special function held in a major convention centre here, the Indian High Commissioner, R. L. Narayan, termed it a landmark event. Speaking on the theme of how the launch of the air-link has come at an appropriate moment in the bilateral context, the High Commissioner cited the fact that in the last financial year, Malaysia emerged as India's No. 1 trading partner among the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), notching up a figure of $4.3 billion.

Speaking at the afternoon function, Malaysia's Deputy Minister for Tourism, Y. B. Dato' Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, commended what he termed the "opening of another gateway'' to Malaysia, and recalled the fact that there has been a significant uptrend in the number of Indians visiting Malaysia over the past two years: it was 145,000 in 2003 and 172,000 in 2004.

For Jet Airways, widely perceived as India's best "full-service'' category airline, this is the fourth foray outside the country under the open skies regime. It launched flights to Kathmandu last year, and to Colombo (on March 23) and Singapore (April 14) this year. The airline is now set to launch its Mumbai-London flights on May 23. A flight to the United States via a European station is also on the cards in the short term. The airline is thus bracing for the long haul, literally and metaphorically, on some highly competitive but lucrative sectors, even as it seeks to cope with the twin challenges of rising oil costs and a domestic market where competition from low-cost airlines, at least three of them now, is hotting up by the day. Flush with the success of the recent IPO (initial public offer) and a good annual performance announcement made this past week, the airline is on a high, notwithstanding the sceptics.

46th destination

Even on the international routes it has competitor Air Sahara nipping at the heels. That airline, known for its pricing advantage, beat Jet to fly to Colombo first, and closely followed it on the Singapore sector. Sahara is now all set to follow it to Kuala Lumpur as well.

Jet Airways chief operating officer Peter Leuthi, seemed all confidence, however, as he reeled off figures to prove that the airline is on a roll. Highlighting the fact that it is on the threshold of yet another phase of growth as its launches itself in the international sphere, he seemed to assert that Jet will have its own mechanisms to beat low-cost challenges, employing a strategy of flexibility and season-driven fare strategies. He said the airline set great store by its latest launch, which marked the 46th destination for it.

He pointed to the fact that within a span of less than 12 years, what was launched as an air taxi service now ruled the domestic market with a 43 per cent share, operating 275 flights a day, handling some 25,000 passengers a day, which added up to eight million passengers a year. In 2004-05 the airline had gained an 18 per cent growth in traffic over the previous year.

He paid tributes to the policy initiatives made by the Governments of India and Malaysia which facilitated the launching of the Kuala Lumpur flight in the latest instance. He mentioned that the first Jet flight on the Kuala Lumpur-Chennai sector, operated in the return direction this morning, had a passenger load of 100 — which he said was a proud figure for a new entrant.

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