Jet Airways Boosts Capacity to UAE

Indian carrier Jet Airways is to introduce a tenth daily rotation to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a new link to Sharjah from Thiruvananthapuram. The new service will commence from October 30 and will be flown using a 154-seat Boeing 737-800 offering 16 Premiere and 138 Economy seats.

The introduction of the new flight will further strengthen Jet Airways' presence in the United Arab Emirates. An estimated 538,000 O&D passengers travelled between India and the UAE in the past year, a market dominated by Emirates Airline. Jet Airways is currently ranked as the fifth largest carrier in this market, carrying an estimated 670,000 O&D passengers, approximately 10.4 per cent of the total market.

The Thiruvananthapuram – Sharjah route is already served daily by Air India and twice daily by Air Arabia, while Air India Express offers four flights a week. An estimated 244,000 O&D passengers travelled on the route in the past year, up 11.3 per cent on the same period last year. However, yields have weakened as average fares have slipped by 6.3 per cent to $148 each way.

Jet Airways’ wider Gulf network now covers ten destinations across the Middle East. The additional services to Thiruvananthapuram will complement the airline's existing daily Gulf operations from Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai, Doha, Kuwait, Muscat and Sharjah, as well as Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam to Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi.

"Jet Airways has established itself as a prominent brand in the intensely competitive Indo-Gulf sector for its service and quality of its in-flight product. We are confident that the new service from Thiruvananthapuram to Sharjah will prove immensely popular with our guests,” said Nikos Kardassis, Chief Executive Officer, Jet Airways. “We believe that this new route has the potential to serve the needs of our corporate and business travelers, especially from the South."