Jet Airways recently announced it’s new flight route – Mumbai-Paris, with the inaugural flight taking off earlier this week from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport’s new T2. The airline will operate the A330-200 aircraft on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The flight frequency will increase to daily operations from 26 June 2014. Furthermore, the airline has signed a codeshare agreement with Air France for connectivity beyond Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport.
Speaking on the sidelines of the inauguration, Gaurang Shetty, Senior Vice President – Commercial, Jet Airways said, “Both the Mumbai and Paris routes will have the codeshare, with the flight timings being well aligned for better connectivity. The codeshare connects the customers to 23 European cities beyond Paris aboard Air France, while Jet Airways will provide Air France fliers with connectivity to domestic points in India from Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi.”
When asked about the airline’s expectations from the route, Shetty stated that Jet Airways is expecting to notch healthy load factors from these flights. “On our inaugural flight we had a booking of 186 economy seats against a 190 seat configuration. Similarly, we saw 16 seats booked in business class against a 30 seat configuration,” he added.
Speaking about their plans for the year, Shetty revealed that the airline will focus on keeping it’s fleet young and modern, as opposed to expanding it, by replacing old aircraft with modern ones as and when the lease runs out.
