New Delhi, Jet Airways India  has planned to introduce an eight-seater semi-business class on Jet Konnect flights. Till now Jet Konnect are all economy planes with no option for business class.

New seats, branded Konnect Select will have a 40-inch reclining position compared with 44 inches in regular business class seats in full-service flights of Jet Airways India. Passengers will get hot meals, a welcome drink and in-flight reading material.

All flights of Jet Airways Konnect will have this class. Currently Jet Airways Konnect operates 195 daily flights. Fares for this class will be lower than Jet Airways regular business class by 20-25%. Jet Airways is supposed to increase their profit by 10% from this. However, these seats will be priced around two-and-a-half times more than Konnects lowest economy fares.

We converted Jet Airways flights into all-economy Konnect flights on such routes which are quite price-sensitive and (were) experiencing only 40-45% seat occupancy in business class, said Sudheer Raghavan, chief commercial officer at Jet Airways, adding that it was ideal to introduce Konnect Select instead of bringing back full-service flights.

This experiment has been done previously by other low cost carriers such as GoAir,m which introduced a business class section with the name GoBusiness in late 2008.

Konnect Select shows the confidence in the upturn of passenger demand, especially for premium passengers, said Mahantesh Sabarad, senior vice-president (equity research) at Fortune Equity Brokers (India) Ltd, who estimated that it would bring in at least Rs12-13 lakh a day for the airline. On the downside, though, he said the multiplicity of brand will leave passengers confused.

Notes to Editor

About Jet Airways

Jet Airways India is the second largest airlines service of India. Jet Airways operates 400 flights on a daily basis which connects over 80 destinations which includes 44 domestic and 21 international destinations. It also provides two low cost carriers Jet Konnect and JetLite.