The country’s largest private carrier Jet Airways has proposed to enter into a marketing alliance with South African Airways. The airline is awaiting regulatory approval for the tie-up which would help the two carriers sell each other?s tickets on Mumbai-Johannesburg besides connecting other onward destinations, industry sources said.
?The two carriers would code-share on the trunk Mumbai-Johannesburg route. The issue is currently pending with civil aviation ministry,” a Jet Airways official said.
Jet seeks to provide its customers the option to fly with South African Airways for onward connectivity to cities such as Cape Town and Durban. The proposed agreement would allow the South African Airlines passengers to book tickets on Jet Airways’ network in India. ?The flight is not doing as we had expected at the time of its launch. On an average we are seeing a occupancy of 60-70% on the flight. The code-share with the South African carrier would help us get more passengers,? the official said.
It generally takes about 16-18 months to break-even on long-haul routes such as Mumbai-Johannesburg. The airline had launched the flight in April this year with its A330-200 aircraft. The traffic on India-South Africa route is higher during the winter.
“There is not sufficient traffic for two airlines on India-South Africa route. Jet is losing more money on this route than what it had expected but it must have factored in this,” Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) India head Kapil Kaul said. Jet Airways had introduced the flight hoping to get tourist and business traffic on the route which is growing at about 8-10% annually.
“Going forward I expect South African Airways to pull out from Mumbai-Johannesburg. They have already reduced frequency on this route,” Kaul added.
Jet Airways chief commercial officer Sudheer Raghavan had told FE that the airline was looking to add flights where the break-even time was shorter and not on the sectors which required a waiting of 12-18 month to become profitable.