Jet Airways 'pleased' but not yet profitable at Brussels

Jet Airways is "very pleased" with the performance of its European hub in Brussels, which it launched in August 2007 with a daily Mumbai-BRU-Newark 777 service, claiming that its first year "proves that the concept of hubbing out of your home market works."
But CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer confirmed to ATWOnline on the sidelines of a presentation in Brussels that the venture is not yet profitable. "We remain optimistic to achieve our target to break even after 18 months of operations despite the current slowdown," he said.
Jet currently connects daily flights from Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai to New York JFK, Toronto and EWR, equating to 1,504 seats. It flew some 704,000 passengers through BRU through the end of September, achieving an average load factor of around 75%. "It counters all this euphoria of nonstop, very-long-haul flights. Brussels Airport has become, uniquely, an Asian carrier's hub," Prock-Schauer claimed.
Despite the losses, during its 13 months at BRU Jet has become "the market leader in Belgium on all its destinations, [the] largest long-haul carrier at BRU and the largest cargo operator in belly load on BRU," he added. The carrier said it holds a 40% market share on BRU-JFK, 49% on BRU-EWR and 70% on BRU-Toronto.
03/10/08 ATWOnline, USA

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Categories: Foreign Oct 2008, Jet Airways Oct 2008