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Airlines of the Past-Here come the Jet's
- Maanav Parikh
- Mar 17
- 4 min read
As an aviation fanatic, one thing that fascinates me more than anything about aviation is how, with its advent, one can travel between two of the most unexpected cities on earth. After all, that is the beauty of different routes and more so why they exist in the first place.
Anyway, as I continue to explore different airlines in India, one name never fades away from my memory, Jet Airways. Oh, how do I miss Jet Airways and the sheer class it oozed. As a route fanatic and a lifelong Jet Airways customer, it felt right to explore the past and see Jet's overlooked international domination in this feature of Airlines of the Past.
Spreading the Wings
By 2004, Jet had emerged victorious from the airline wars of the 90s and now was one of the most sophisticated and most preferred airlines in the Indian aviation market promptly securing its position as the largest domestic airline in the country. But in 2004, everything changed as the DGCA announced that private carriers could now fly internationally barring the Middle East breaking the longstanding AI/IA duopoly. Wanting a share of the pie, Jet jumped on the Idea of going international and swiftly started its international voyage. In 2004, Jet launched its first international flight on the popular Chennai to Colombo route marking the arrival of Jet aircraft on foreign soil. After safe bets like Katmandu, Jet took its next leap of faith in the following year. Jet decided to lease 3 South African A340-300s on the lucrative London route truly marking Jet's International arrival. Interestingly, Jet was the only carrier in India to operate the A340.
Thinking out of the box
By 2007, Jet was enjoying success on its existing routes having also launched Singapore in the midst of all of this. However, they weren't done yet, they wanted to go beyond London, to the US and Canada. The North American market had been a longstanding Air India territory which was all for Jet to take keeping in mind the latter's abysmal reputation at the time.
Wanting to maximize its loads and capture demand from the south of India, Jet decided to launch a scissor hub in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. A scissor hub, in the context of airline operations, is an airport where multiple flights originate from different locations, often with passengers traveling to one destination, land and deplane simultaneously, facilitating efficient passenger transfers and connections. Having said that, Jet launched flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Brussels with onward connections to New York JFK, Newark, and Toronto. It also operated a short-lived Bengaluru-Brussels route having it later replaced by Chennai-Brussels. Just as they secured their presence on the East Coast, the West Coast came calling. In 2008, Jet Airways, with great gusto, launched direct flights between Mumbai to San Fransisco via Shanghai not only making it the first Indian airline to fly to not only SFO but also Shanghai. A true ahead-of-its-time route keeping in mind the success AI enjoys in SFO. However many of these ambitious ventures would turn out disastrous for the airline due to the whirlwind of financial issues surrounding the airline.
Tryst for Domination
As the financial crisis of the airline industry improved, Jet was back at setting its eyesight to more untapped foreign opportunities but not too far off citing the disastrous SFO outing and its ho-hum Brussels rendezvous. Many of the popular destinations now saw Jet Airways before any other airline like Milan and Ho Chi Minh City. Jet also entered where there was a gap like Manchester and Johannesburg. Unlike Air India, Jet Airways also experiment with routes from South India like the popular Chennai-Paris and Bengaluru-Amsterdam routes. In 2016, it trimmed its scissor hub operations as it axed flights to the United States and made a move from Brussels to Amsterdam.
Ambition Kills?
The seas of the Indian Aviation market are rough, even for a dominant player like Jet. Although these routes may appear to be perfect on paper, they were far from it. Unlike today, our travel market has not reached the level it is today making most of these routes rather ahead of their time. With the heat from the competition given by Indigo and SpiceJet, the airline was on life support until it tragically succumbed to its debts and mismanagements in 2019 bringing an end to an era.
Conclusion
There is nothing much to conclude apart from the fact that there will maybe, never be another Jet airways in the sky who truly gives the joy of flying!
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