Jet To Operate Wide-Body Aircraft To Fight Congestion

Online, January 10, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Jet Airways, India's largest carrier in terms of passenger volume, has found a unique way to resolve congestion at some of the major airports in the country.

The airline is looking at operating wide body airplanes in some of the congested domestic routes from the summer schedule. "From the summer schedule, we will be operating wide bodied Airbus A330s in a few of our flights to and from Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai as the congestion at airports limit the number of flights we can operate," said a senior Jet Executive, requesting anonymity.

The airline operates single-aisle Boeing 737s or Airbus A320s with around 160 seats per aircraft for domestic routes. The wide-bodied aircraft will provide around 230 seats per aircraft, allowing the airline to have more capacity with less number of flights.

"Initially, we plan to take around two A330s either on lease or on sale and operate around 20 flights," the executive said. The Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways operates over 400 flights daily to 67 destinations worldwide.

Infrastructure constraints due to upgrade work at Mumbai and Chennai airports have drastically brought down the capacity of these airports and has forced airlines to drastically cut down the number of flights. Mumbai airport has been the worst hit with the main runway closed for eight hours every day from Monday to Saturday. With domestic travel growing in double digits post-slowdown, airlines wanted 573 daily slots from the airport, but has managed only 490.

In mid-November, the Delhi-Mumbai sector saw a 200-300 per cent jump in fares, attributed to a number of factors, including more demand chasing less capacity.

Meanwhile, Jet Airways has rolled back the salary cut of its over 10,000 employees from January. The airline had done a partial rollback of the pay cuts in July last year.