Jet Airways has decided to lease six short-haul ATR jets from Ireland-based Investec International. The airline will replace the same number of jets of Canadian Regional Jets (CRJ) operated by its wholly-owned subsidiary JetLite by the new aircraft. ?The new aircraft will join the JetLite fleet in July-October this year. The jets would be taken on dry lease for five to six years,? a Jet Airways official said.
The aircraft acquisition committee in the civil aviation ministry would take up the proposal of Jet Airways on Tuesday.
JetLite operates a fleet of 24 aircraft, which includes 18 Boeing 737 series and 6 Canadian Regional Jets 200 series. The airline flies to 28 cities in the domestic markets besides two international destinations (Kathmandu and Colombo) operating over 110 flights a day. Jet Airways maintains a fleet of 89 aircraft which includes Boeing, Airbus and ATR aircraft. The two airlines together command more than one-fourth of the highly-competitive domestic aviation market. ?Jet already operates ATR fleet in the domestic market. Now that they are taking same aircraft type for JetLite the airline would have big advantage from cost perspective. Commonality of fleet brings economies of scale. Two different type of aircraft means two different cost structure,? Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) India head Kapil Kaul said.
The demand in the domestic aviation sector has picked up necessitating capacity induction by airlines. The domestic air traffic grew 22% to 211.38 in the first five months of the current year.
Most of the airlines have charted out plans to add up to their fleet to meet market requirements. All the three low-cost airlines IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir would increase capacity this year. ?GoAir has asked permission to import two A320s,” a civil aviation ministry official said. The growth in air traffic has been led especially by low-cost airlines including JetLite which has a market share of 8% in the local market.