You're celebrating your second anniversary in Paris: is France so important to Jet Airways that you organise an event there every year?
Gaurang Shetty - France is a very important market, particularly for business travel, as it is one of India's main trading partners. From a leisure point of view, the French market is one of the most important in the travel sector: everyone wants to be there. Paris is also a fascinating destination for the Indian population. Combining these two factors, we had excellent reasons to enter this market, especially as our cooperation with Air France has strengthened our offer. So yes: we will continue to organise events like this, as we want to interact more with our customers, travel agents and partners. We are also working with the Indian Tourist Board to promote the destination. India is still seen as an exotic destination on the French market. We're banking on strong demand in the North, with Rajasthan and Delhi, and in the South, with a former French colony like Pondicherry, as well as Colombo and connecting flights to Bangkok.
The new face of Mumbai airport should help you promote these connecting flights....
G. S. - Yes, Mumbai is our main hub and this new integrated airport greatly facilitates connections from Paris to the domestic and international flights offered by Jet Airways. It's a very good product, a brand new terminal, inaugurated a few weeks ago. India suffers from a bad image in terms of airports, but the situation has really changed in recent years. Airports have modernisedMumbai or Delhi, for example, and are now at the cutting edge. The experience is much better than it has been in the past.
How are you working with Air France?
G. S. - This partnership is based on a unique model, the best there is. Flights from Mumbai and Paris are complementary, allowing business travellers to choose the schedule that best suits their schedule. From codeshares have also been introduced in over twenty destinations across Europe.
How is traffic developing on the Paris-Mumbai route, particularly in the business travel segment?
G. S. - We transported 144,000 passengers from April 2015 to March 2016, which represents a increase of 16% compared with the first year of operation. This proves that our model works, by offering business travellers these two timetable options per day. Our business product, which features a fully reclining bed, has an occupancy rate of 80% to 85%. The majority of passengers are French, accounting for 60% of traffic.
What sets Jet Airways apart?
G. S. - Since the company was founded in 1993, we have always been convinced of the need to offer passengers a premium service. Here are just a few examples, our domestic operations in India are allfull service" When passengers are served a meal on board, they earn miles on their journeys, which is not the case for all airlines. So we've always stood out for our innovations.
What is the new Jet Advance service?
G. S. - We're always looking for innovative products to stay ahead of the game. As the cost of changing a ticket is often high, we decided to introduce a reasonable fare to allow passengers to take the previous flight at a lower cost. We have also launched another tool called Jet Fare Lock: many travellers don't decide to buy their ticket straight away, even when faced with a very attractive fare. They wait a few more days, and then are generally angry with themselves for not having booked straight away... With Fare Lock, travellers can block the ticket and book later.
What prompted you to moving your european hub from Brussels to Amsterdam?
G. S. - We were in discussions with KLM and Delta. As luck would have it, our move took place four or five days after the attacks in Brussels... At Schiphol we applied the same model as at Zaventem, but we have stronger partners on flights to North America. Brussels is a smaller airport than Amsterdam, which is internationally recognised as a very good hub, including for cargo. During the first two months of operations from Amsterdam, we recorded very good performances, with very good load factors.
Jet Airways recently published record results: what's the secret?
G. S. - What we have done is very simple: we are one of Boeing's top-performing airlines in terms of the number of hours flown with each aircraft. An aircraft is so expensive that every minute spent on the ground is a problem. Our aircraft are therefore flying 13 hours a day. Productivity has also been increased and costs reduced. It's not just the price of fuel, which changes every week. We also had to reduce non-fuel costs. All these factors explain our good results.
