Jet makes Brussels a gateway to Asia

Zaventem/Belgium: For two-and-a-half hours every morning, the Belgian airport of Zaventem turns Indian, signalled in part by a serious spike in the whisky sales of the duty-free shops. Between 8:00 am and 10:30 am, India’s Jet Airways dominates the airport’s runways with three flights from Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai and another three from New York (JFK and Newark) and Toronto converging in Brussels before flying off in opposite directions again. Up to 2,640 passengers per day are transported between North America and India in this manner, the result of Jet Airways’ bold decision to create a hub outside of its home market.
For two-and-a-half hours every morning, the Belgian airport of Zaventem turns Indian, signalled in part by a serious spike in the whisky sales of the duty-free shops. Between 8:00 am and 10:30 am, India’s Jet Airways dominates the airport’s runways with three flights from Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai and another three from New York (JFK and Newark) and Toronto converging in Brussels before flying off in opposite directions again. Up to 2,640 passengers per day are transported between North America and India in this manner, the result of Jet Airways’ bold decision to create a hub outside of its home market.
Hubbing abroad is rare, explains Stefan Hollands, Jet Airways’ General Manager for the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) region. To begin with, most airports are inclined to protect their domestic carriers and are thus unwilling to welcome foreign airlines. For example, Munich would probably prefer not to facilitate the creation of a rival to Lufthansa.
Availability of the requisite number of slots (the five minutes a plane needs to use the runway to take off or land) within a two or three-hour time corridor is another requirement that many well-established airports are unable to meet.
Reeling from the collapse of its domestic carrier Sabena in 2001, Zaventem was, however, a perfect match for Jet. Its new domestic carrier Brussels Airlines did not fly to North America or Asia, making it non-competitive with the Indian airline. At the same time, the airport was also less busy than its neighbours in Paris or Frankfurt and was, as a result, willing and able to find the gates and slots Jet needed to make Brussels a hub.
07/09/09 Pallavi Aiyar/Business Standard

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2009, Jet Airways Sep 2009