Jet Airways to relaunch New York flight

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Jet Airways will reintroduce its service to New York in May with a stopover in Abu Dhabi in a bid to expand its global network. Jet Airways and Etihad entered into strategic alliance last April and the two airlines will use Abu Dhabi as a gateway to launch additional services to Europe, Africa and the US.

At present Jet Airways flies to Newark and Toronto via Brussels. It stopped its India-New York service last year due to losses and code shares with Brussels Airlines on the transatlantic leg of this route.

On Wednesday Etihad announced it will launch its second Abu Dhabi-New York flight from March 1 leasing a Boeing 777-300ER from Jet Airways. It said Jet Airways will take over and operate the flight from May 1.

"The new Abu Dhabi – New York flight has been scheduled to connect with evening services by Etihad Airways, Jet Airways or both carriers arriving from four Indian cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Cochin and Chennai. Flights arriving back from New York will also connect from Abu Dhabi to these cities,'' the airline said in the release.

The New York flight will be Jet's second onward flight from Abu Dhabi. It now flies to Kuwait via Abu Dhabi using the fifth freedom rights (in India -Abu Dhabi agreement) which allow foreign airlines to operate a service to an onward destination.

Chief Executive Officer of Etihad Airways, James Hogan, said New York was one of the airline’s most popular destinations, not only for guests flying from Abu Dhabi but also for travellers from a wide range of connecting destinations, including many in India.

The airlines did not respond to an email query on the subject.

Under the commercial co-operation agreement the two airlines plan to connect Mumbai to Newark, Bangalore to Chicago and Delhi to New York, through Abu Dhabi. The airlines had planned to launch the services in last winter schedule.

The new flights would enable it to take government-owned Air India head on, as the latter connects the same three points through Delhi (direct to New York and Chicago) and Mumbai (direct to Newark and via Delhi to New York) in the US. The combination will also challenge the domination of Emirates among West Asian carriers over the lucrative Indian-US market.

Jet earns 60% of its revenue from international operations. It flies to Abu Dhabi from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kochi. Currently, say experts, British Airways, Lufthansa, Emirates, Air India and Air France-KLM are the top five airlines on the India-US route (including indirect flights).

According to studies, the India-North America market is growing annually by just under 10% and about 730,000 passengers will fly yearly between the two countries by 2014.