Jet Airways drops plan for Mumbai-South Africa flight

Johannesburg: India's Jet Airways has scrapped its plans to launch a Mumbai-Johannesburg flight from April in favour of more lucrative destinations.
The airline has postponed its planed operations to South Africa indefinitely in favour of more profitable routes to destinations such as the US and China, Jet Airways representative Alex Cost said.
"We operate a business and have to consider the bottom line by looking at routes which are more profitable and deliver better yields," Cost told media.
"We cannot afford to lose money. We look only at business decisions and not at any political decisions (in deciding routes)." He said destinations in Africa were "on the cards" for Jet but could not give any time frames.
Jet CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer had announced in November, when the company was voted India's Leading Airline at the annual World Travel Awards in Bangalore, that the airline was finalising plans to start operating on the Mumbai-Johannesburg route from summer 2008.
Possible extensions were also being considered at the time to the coastal city of Durban, home to about 70 percent of South African Indians descended largely from the first indentured labourers to arrive there in 1860. The initial plans included onward flights to Kenya in East Africa, but this option too has been shelved.
07/03/08 IANS/Economic Times

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Categories: Foreign Mar 2008, Jet Airways Mar 2008