Gulf 'will play key role in our business'

Dubai: Naresh Goyal, 59, is the founder chairman of India's Jet Airways. After earning a bachelor's degree in commerce in 1967, Goyal worked for a travel firm in India.

Using his training and experience in the travel business, he set up Jetair (Private) Limited in May 1974 with the aim of providing sales and marketing representation to foreign airlines in India.

Goyal took advantage of New Delhi's economic liberalisation policy, which facilitated the opening up of the aviation sector, in 1991 to set up Jet Airways.

The company launched commercial operations in May 1993. It began with air taxi operations as, in those days, private airlines were not allowed to operate as scheduled carriers. The company was given a scheduled airline permit in February 1994.

Goyal has built up Jet Airways into a formidable airline in India, navigating skilfully in India's complex world of slow bureaucracy and difficult politics. The company is now aggressively expanding its overseas services and has a special focus on the Gulf region. Dubai is Jet's 20th international service, while services within India cover 45 destinations.

Jet Airways acquired JetLite, formerly Air Sahara, in April 2007 to add a low-fare carrier to its portfolio. The group has a combined fleet strength of 109 aircraft and offers a schedule of over 525 flights daily. Jet has flown 80 million passengers since its inception.

The airline will have a code-share deal with Emirates in October. It already has a similar arrangement Etihad Airways.

Goyal spoke to Gulf News in an exclusive interview during his recent visit to the UAE.

Gulf News: What is going to be the scope of your relationship with Emirates?

Naresh Goyal: We have had a great relationship with Emirates since we started the airline 14 years back. We are enhancing our commercial cooperation with them with our new operations in Dubai.

Our cooperation will include code-sharing and frequent flyer programme, we already have through check-in with them. This relationship will help both Jet Airways and Emirates. A lot of people have been coming to Dubai through other points in the Gulf and it will help our customers.

We will bring a lot of people from India to Dubai and connect them on their network to places such as Beirut, Cairo, Athens.

Also people going to India from all those places will use each other's network. Dubai is a great hub and Emirates has very good services.

How many passengers do you expect to fly in the first year of operations in the UAE?

I am not able to tell you how many passengers we will be flying. Our flights from Dubai to Mumbai and Delhi start on August 23 and we feel our load factor will be more than 80 per cent. We are already doing very well from Abu Dhabi.

How do you view the Gulf passenger market and what sort of contribution this region will make to your revenues?

We are flying to Doha, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Bahrain, Kuwait, and now Dubai. We are already the first choice of people flying from the Gulf to India.

We are going to start services to Saudi Arabia in October. This region will constitute a very good percentage of our overall revenues. I cannot give you a percentage today. Our market share is already 60 per cent among Indians travelling to India from the Gulf.

What is the significance of this region in your international network?

There are about four million Indians living in the Gulf. Trade between India and the Gulf is expanding and political relations are excellent so I see this region playing a very important role in our business. I do not have revenue projections to give you at the moment. The total revenue of our company is $4 billion. The share of international operations is 40 per cent. In the next two years it is going to 50 per cent.

What new destinations are you planning in the Gulf?

We will be adding more places from India to the Gulf. We are looking at Kochi, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore from Dubai, and we are also looking to flying from these Indian cities to other places in the Gulf.

While some airlines want to cut routes because of high oil prices, you are adding more destinations. What is behind your expansion strategy?

Before we started, the share of Indian carriers was only 15 to 20 per cent. With Jet Airways coming in, India's market share has gone up to 50 per cent. There is a huge market. There are some 30 million Indians living overseas.

Today we have four flights to North America, and we are doing extremely well there. The Indian diaspora does help our business. Then other people travelling to India also prefer us because our services are better than most of other airlines. Out of London, our market share is 30 per cent on the India route. We are doing very well in Hong Kong and Singapore.

India is seeing strong growth in tourism, and new infrastructure is being developed. What impact will it have on the Indian airline sector? What changes would you like to see in aviation infrastructure?

Jet Airways has played an important role in promoting domestic tourism. We are bringing in a lot of people from Europe, China, Singapore and Thailand. The government has done good work in improving infrastructure. Work on Delhi and Mumbai airports will be finished by 2010. There are 35 new airports coming. I am hopeful that airport infrastructure will further improve. Airport services are quite good and they are improving.

Airlines across the world are talking about reducing aircraft weight to achieve better fuel economy, but you have talked about adding more cabin comforts. How does that square with reducing the fuel bill?

Our first class is doing extremely well. Our premier class, which people call business class, is also doing well. We prefer to put a lot more in the front where we make more money. Overall our products are doing better in terms of profitability.