Jet Airways is planning daily flights between eight Indian cities and Abu Dhabi by winter 2013 to cash in on its partnership with Etihad Airways, the two airlines said in their FIPB application.
Jet wants to start new daily services from Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Hyderabad and Trivandrum.
Jet is also planning to launch Mumbai-Abu Dhabi-Newark, Delhi-Abu Dhabi-New York and Bangalore-Abu Dhabi-Chicago routes by November 2013 via fifth flying rights. Fifth freedom rights of flying give airlines the right to have stopover while connecting the nation of its origin with another country.
Jet Airways has already utilised fifth freedom rights to start a Kochi-Abu Dhabi-Kuwait service in April.
Last month, the airline’s management said that they are working on multi-pronged network strategy wherein Abu Dhabi would become the hub for Jet’s international traffic flying to western countries.
?Out of the total international traffic of 40 million, 28 million are flying to and from the West,? said Raj Sivakumar, senior vice president ? alliances and planning at Jet Airways.