TravTalk India Online Magazine
Jazeera Airways has partnered with SpiceJet to allow agents to issue tickets to connect seamlessly on a single ticket. It will also launch a direct, non-stop service from Kuwait to London Gatwick this summer.
Hazel Jain
Low-cost carrier headquartered in Kuwait, Jazeera Airways, is engaging with like-minded low-cost carriers across countries to allow seamless travel to its passengers. Sharing this is Rohit Ramachandran, CEO, Jazeera Airways, who was in Mumbai recently to meet the airlines’ stakeholders during a networking evening and thank them for their support. He said, “Instead of investing in expensive systems as legacy carriers do, we are engaging directly with other like-minded low-cost carriers around the world. In India, we are working on an integration with SpiceJet which will allow passengers on its network to connect seamlessly to ours with one ticket without going through the complicated process of code-sharing and interlining in the traditional sense that the full-service carriers do.”
This means that the travel agents would be able to seamlessly issue tickets on one document from SpiceJet onto the Jazeera Airways’ network. He added that the airline is looking to work out similar relationships out of London Gatwick. For instance, it is working on one with Norwegian in Norway which in theory would allow passengers to go from New Delhi to Los Angeles all on low-cost carriers on one ticket. “This was not possible in the past. This will be announced soon,” Ramachandran revealed.
Our integration with SpiceJet will allow passengers on its network to connect seamlessly to ours with one ticket
The airline currently flies five routes in India, the latest one being New Delhi started in December 2018. The others are Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kochi and Mumbai. To this, he added that the airline is seeing current seat factors of up to 85-90 per cent, the lowest being 86 per cent out of India. “We would love to add more capacity to New Delhi but we are restricted by bilateral agreements between the two countries which right now are maxed out to 10K seats and is being utilised 100 per cent. There is more demand than supply which calls for a more liberal approach,” he added.
When asked if the airline would ask for more routes whenever possible, he said, “We would immediately increase services into India. I can foresee Jazeera Airways being interested to operate services to at least 10 more cities like Trivandrum, Kochi, Calicut, Kannur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Jaipur, Amritsar and even Lucknow.” The airline will be launching direct, non-stop, low-cost service from Kuwait to London Gatwick this summer. “This will be the first low-cost airline service connecting the GCC to the UK,” he said.
