Jet Airways restructuring exercised started last year resulted in a 33 per cent increase in its domestic passenger traffic last month as compared to November 2008. The airlines international passenger traffic also registered a 19 per cent growth on a seat factor of 81.9 per cent.
The no-frills brand of Jet Airways, JetLite, too saw the traffic increase by 22 per cent and a seat factor of 76.7 per cent in November 2009.
"Our improved performance is due to the contributions of our team of highly dedicated professionals and the coming together of a series of strategic restructuring initiatives being implemented by the airline over the last year," said Nikos Kardassis, chief executive officer, Jet Airways, in a notification to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
The restructuring involves a series of route rationalisations, trimming of strategic costs, streamlining of processes, addition of new routes and an enhanced customer experience. Additionally, the number of marketing and network initiatives have resulted in increased payloads and led to a robust growth in traffic despite the all-round fall in global air travel.
The company also launched a new low-cost brand Konnect this year. This was done as the industry saw number of business class passengers going down drastically. "Konnect was flexible, pragmatic response to the downshift in demand across several domestic routes, which saw a shift in demand from full service to low-cost due to the global slowdown," said Kardassis.
On the international sector, Jet Airways has enhanced its connectivity with the introduction of a new Mumbai – Kathmandu service and increased frequency on the same route. The airline also plans to introduce Mumbai – Dhaka service on December 23 this year. Both these services will offer travellers seamless connectivity to several destinations across India, as well as to the Gulf, North America, Europe and ASEAN.