In recent times, full-service carrier Jet Airways has seen its market share dip 4 per cent, though the airline continues to be the second-largest in terms of overall size. In an interview with BusinessLine , Praveen Iyer, Vice-President, Commercial (India Sales), shares the company’s strategy and the reasons for focusing more on network expansion. Excerpts:

Jet Airways’ focus, of late, has been more on network expansion than on market share.

Yes, it is a conscious decision. Network has been our core strength and will continue to be our strength. We want to go after quality traffic, rather than quantity. A network provides multiple opportunities, multiple options to a customer; and as an airline, you can actually pick and choose the right traffic. Which is why you will see Jet isn’t part of the market share game. We want to be profitable, offer multiple choices to our passengers: a well-connected network and flights through the interline code share support we have with the other carriers. This will continue to be the mantra of our success.

But hasn’t it come at the cost of market share? Your market share has dipped from 23 per cent to 19 per cent.

Market share is a reflection of capacity share. The year-on-year capacity share versus market share — that is the matrix I would like to see as a commercial person. It tells you about the hygiene of the airline. If you look at the delta between a market share and a capacity share, and if you are able to maintain that, you are absolutely fine. If a certain carrier adds more capacity than you do, and if there are new entrants in the market, what follows is capacity growth, which is going to have a direct impact on your market share as well because your capacity share and your market share comes down. This is what’s happening in the market.

Being a legacy carrier, one expected you to expand your global network at a faster pace. Shouldn’t the Bengaluru-Singapore flight launched recently have been on board much earlier?

Over the last 2-3 months, we have had a lot of aircraft for redeliveries. And that’s why we have seen certain existing stronger routes upgraded to B777 (Boeing’s wide-body jet), like the Bombay-Singapore, the Bombay-Dubai and even the Bombay/Delhi-Amsterdam services. When we upgrade existing 737s to wide-bodied aircraft we re-deploy 737s back into domestic, and certain key destinations that we believe are growing rapidly. That is how the Bengaluru-Singapore flight came about, and you will see more such flights being announced.

So you will continue to focus on international operations…

We are actually pretty well balanced. The reason why we come across as international-heavy in terms of ASKs (available seat kilometres, which is the seats available multiplied by the number of km flown) is because a B777 or an A330 — except one or two flights — is meant for long-haul traffic, and is a better return on investments. It looks as if we are international-heavy but in reality, we are redeploying some of the assets back into certain destinations where you are supposed to go in for long-haul flights. In the domestic market, we want to grow sensibly; at the same time be profitable and not just gun for market share, and at the same time provide an international network that compliments a domestic network. That’s why what you will see that 15 per cent of international traffic feeds into domestic.

The several code-share agreements you have with international carriers is quite unusual for an Indian airline. Does this mean you would rather play it safe while expanding global routes?

One of the USPs of Jet Airways is that we are a network carrier and we are proud of it as it offers several choices for the customers. Out of India, we offer options to Salt Lake City and to Seychelles and it is a very rare combination with the same airline as we offer multiple choice of destinations. I think that’s the view we would like to take: multiple choices in one shot through our partner network and through our equity partner Etihad, and code share with carriers like KLM or Delta. We are a network carrier out of India and it doesn’t have to come through your own fleet of aircraft. It can come through your partner aircraft and it can be as same as flying your own equipment from your point to any other point and that is what we would like to demonstrate.

…but doesn’t that mean you are overly dependent on your partners?

It is absolutely complimentary and when you are running at 85 per cent load factor: even if there is over-dependency and you enter a stage where it could be threatening, you have other revenues available in terms of traffic flows within your network. When you are building a network you are also creating multiple combinations for traffic flows. A simple example is that the Bengaluru-Singapore also connects to Bengaluru – Abu Dhabi. So, from Singapore, I can sell Abu Dhabi and similarly Colombo too.

You shifted your European hub from Brussels to Amsterdam. How has this helped?

We did it because of the network Amsterdam offered compared with Brussels. More importantly, we get access to the US without really flying to the US. We recently shared some statistics internally: between us and our partner carriers, we are seeing the same share year over year. So, we had a Brussels to Newark operation which had Bombay, Delhi connectivity; we withdrew that and nothing happened to our shares. Now we have got multiple flights to the US and through multiple gateways.

Your domestic services don’t offer the kind of deep discounts low-cost carriers do.

We don’t have to really depend on something like dirt cheap sales or a ₹1 fare because our network speaks for itself. And the moment when we have a distribution set-up which supports that network, we don’t need that extra 10-15 per cent. If you knock off that 20 per cent from some of the carriers that offer discounts, the seat factor comes down to 75 per cent.

We have an 85 per cent seat factor and there is distress inventory available. We want to give our customers a choice to book in advance and get the benefits.

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