Media Release
Dubai, Jan 23: Jet Airways, India's premier airline, today commenced its daily direct flights to Doha from Mumbai and Kozhikode and from Muscat to Kozhikode and Kochi. We became India’s first private airline to start services to the Gulf with our non-stop daily flights connecting India with Bahrain and Kuwait on 5th January 2008. Effective today, Muscat will also have flights to Kozhikode and Kochi.
The inaugural flight to Qatar was received at a well attended reception, by H.E. the Ambassador of India to Qatar, Dr. George Joseph, H.E. Mr. Akbar Al Bakr, CEO Qatar Airways, prominent Indians residing in Qatar and a host of dignitaries from Civil Aviation Authorities and Qatar Airport Services.
Doha became the 58th destination on Jet Airways network and 13th International destination. The flight operations to Doha are planned such that the daily non-stop flights will depart from Mumbai at 0725 hours and arrive into Doha at 0825 hours, leaving Doha at 1000 hours to arrive into Kozhikode at 1655 hours. It will leave Kozhikode at 2000 hours to arrive into Doha at 2200 hours and then leave Doha at 2315 hours to arrive into Mumbai at 0515 Hours. For 2 days in the week the flight to Kozhikode will depart at 1100 hours.
The main features of Jet Airways operations to Doha, will be our daily non-stop flights to each destination we fly to, combined with world class service on-the-ground and in-the-air, which our customers have now got accustomed to.
The departures and arrivals have been worked out keeping in mind passenger convenience as far as possible. Most flights from Gulf to Kochi and Kozhikode, arrive early evening to enable our customers reach home during daylight hours and be home for a family dinner, even if they have to travel a couple hours by road to reach home. The departures from cities in Kerala are also timed so that our customers can reach the airport in daylight and arrive into the Gulf city by dinner time, ready to be at work the next day. Our flights from Gulf cities to Mumbai will arrive early morning to connect to our domestic network within India.
Our fare structure will be extremely competitive as we will have a range of fares available for sale based on the flight profile in terms of seats available at the time of buying the ticket. This will be somewhat based on the dynamic pricing policies that we follow on our domestic network. In the introductory stage, Economy class promotional prices start at QAR 830 for a one way ticket between Doha and Mumbai, and return fares start from QAR 1560. For Kozhidode sector, economy class promotional prices start at QAR 970 for a one way ticket between Doha and Kozhikode, and return fares start from QAR 1690
We will soon offer interline fares with our partner airlines in the Gulf, where customers will be able to fly from Doha to Kochi via Bahrain, or Kuwait to Kozhikode via Doha, or from Dubai or Abu-Dhabi to various destinations is India via any of our on-line points in the Gulf.
Announcing the launch of these new flights, Mr. Naresh Goyal, Chairman, Jet Airways said, “With the launch of Jet Airways’ operations to Muscat and Doha Indian nationals living and working in Middle East will be closer to home.”
We have also officially reduced the minimum connecting time for International to Domestic connections at Mumbai to two and a half hours from the earlier three hours, considering that we now have domestic segments check-in counters at the International Airport itself, and also, the transfers are done from the airside, alongside the tarmac, cutting out the public roads and without really leaving the airport.
At Jet Airways, the growth of our services and network has been constant and consistent. The ultimate mission of Jet Airways, when we commenced our international operations, was to easily and efficiently connect India to all parts of the world. Now, with the commencement of our Gulf operations, our valued customers from this region will also have the Jet Airways advantage to connect to the world, via India. We are working towards connecting the Gulf to all our worldwide destinations in the Far-East, Europe, USA and Canada and the Indian sub-continent, where Jet Airways operates to, via India.
Our code share operations with Qantas will connect passengers to cities in Australia, over Singapore, code share with Brussels Airlines will take our clients all over Europe, via Brussels and our code share with American Airlines will connect many cities in the USA, over New York (JFK).
Also, the whole of India opens up to our flights arriving from the Gulf, into BOM and DEL.
Jet Airways will introduce its world-class service on the Boeing 737-800 aircraft on these sectors, offering the highest quality of comfort, courtesy, reliability and standards of in-flight as well as ground operations, for which it has been highly acclaimed.
With a total fleet strength of 76 aircraft and an average fleet age of 4.4 years, the airline has one of the youngest aircraft fleet in the world. Jet Airways operates over 355 flights daily and has flown over 80 million passengers since inception in May 1993.
Jet Airways has recently been awarded 'India's leading Airline' at the Annual World Travel Awards ceremony, and was also awarded 'India's best domestic airline' at the TTG travel awards.
Jet Airways is represented in the State of Qatar by Cleopatra Travel.