A New Nation Report :Nearly twenty-three years have elapsed since Jet Airways, the second largest airline in India, commenced commercial operations on May 5, 1993 and by now it has achieved successes and won lots of awards. As the second largest airline in India in terms of market share and passengers carried, Jet Airways operates over 300 flights daily to 74 destinations worldwide. With its main hub in Mumbai and secondary hubs at Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Jet Airways commenced flight operations to and from Dhaka eight years ago on the 16th of December 2007 with a single flight. Now Jet Airways operates 21 flights to and from Dhaka at the rate of three flights per day and as an official of Jet Airways told this correspondent recently all the flights to and especially from Dhaka fly with 100 per cent load factor. It is difficult to get seats unless bookings are made with a lot of time in advance. Jet Airways’ present fleet is composed of 115 aircraft including eight Airbus 330-200, four Airbus 330-300, fifteen ATR 72-500, three ATR 72-600, five Boeing 737-700, four Boeing 737-8006, two Boeing 737-900, four Boeing 737-900ER and ten Boeing 777-300ER.The awards that Jet Airways has won include Best First Class Service in the world award at Business Traveller’s 20th annual Best in Business Travel’ award, Best Business Class and Best Economy Class award at the Business Traveller Awards, Best Overall in Entertainment at the Avion Awards 2010, India’s Popular Domestic Airline award at the SATTE 2006 Awards, Business Traveller’s Best Indian Airline Award in London and Best Cargo Airline of North Asia by Cargo Airline of the Year Award.Naresh Goyal, the founder Chairman Jet Airways, has over 40 years of experience in the Civil Aviation Industry to his credit. In May 1974, Naresh Goyal founded Jetair (Private) Limited with the objective of providing sales and marketing representation to foreign airlines in India. In 1991, as part of the ongoing diversification of his business activities, Goyal took advantage of the opening of the Indian Economy and the enunciation of the Open Skies Policy by the Government of India to set up Jet Airways for the operation of scheduled air services on domestic sectors in India. Jet Airways commenced commercial operations on May 5, 1993-about 23 years ago.
