Airlines benefit from Jet Airways collapse

As Jet Airways' flights finally come to an end, even temporarily, competing carriers join them to take advantage of the market gap. Over the past week, many airlines have taken steps to increase capacity, add routes and fill the gap in the shape of Jet Airways.

Even before Jet Airways did not completely suspend its flights, they were struggling to prevent competition from encroaching on their territory. With only a fraction of their fleet in service, virtually none of their routes were functioning.

DGAC, the regulator of air transport in India, did not want to have significant slots at Mumbai and Delhi airports unused. So they have them "temporarily" reassigned. They were caught by Jet Airways competitors, including IndiGo, Vistara, SpiceJet and AirAsia India.

We also heard about how SpiceJet has leased up to 50 unused Jet aircraft. The government was keen to maintain market capacity and preserve the jobs of pilots, crew members and ground staff. But it was only the beginning of the airlines taking advantage of the disappearance of Jet Airways.

Air France-KLM increases capacity in India

In order to minimize the disruption to passengers that could have been reserved with Jet, Air France-KLM is adding capacity to its routes in India as of today. The group has been trading with Jet Airways since 1995, code-sharing with the Indian airline, since 2014. However, they stopped selling code-share tickets earlier this week, when Jet stopped flying. International.

In a statement, Air France-KLM said:

"Depending on their capabilities and operational needs, Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines are increasing the number of seats available to and from India by operating larger capacity aircraft or increasing the number of frequencies,"

Previously, Jet Airways provided daily connections with Paris CDG from Mumbai and Chennai. He has also flown to Amsterdam Schiphol daily from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Air France offers daily flights to Mumbai (the flight is operated by Joon) and to Bangalore, and five times a week to Delhi. KLM offers a daily flight to Delhi and operates three times a week to Mumbai.

SpiceJet adds more planes

Its Indian competitor, SpiceJet, has announced an increase in its capacity by introducing 21 more aircraft into its fleet. They plan to add five Bombardier Q400 aircraft, the first three arriving in the next 10 days. The other two will be in place by June.

In addition, they are looking to lease 16 Boeing 737-800 as soon as possible. SpiceJet anticipates that the first of them will arrive in a few days.

In addition to new aircraft, SpiceJet is looking to add more routes to its network. At the end of May, they plan to offer flights from Mumbai to Hong Kong, Colombo, Jeddah, Dubai, Dhaka, Riyadh, Bangkok and Kathmandu. They also add six other domestic routes from Mumbai, including Kolkata, Chennai and Varanasi.

Although the carrier has not mentioned Jet Airways as a catalyst for their rapid expansion, it is clearly a related problem.

Vistara adding new routes

Vistara has also announced new flights and routes instead of a Jet Airways shaped hole in the market. Five daily return flights will now be provided from Mumbai to Bangalore and daily service has been added to Calcutta, Hyderabad and Goa.

Launching quickly, they started to exploit these new routes on the 16th^th April. To ensure a good grip, Vistara offers a triple mile for those who take these routes between the launch and the 16^th Can.

Air India asks Jet Airways 777

Air India President Ashwani Lohani has asked the State Bank of India to lease the five Jet Airways Boeing 777s to its carrier. They want to add five more flights to their schedule; Delhi to Dubai, London and Singapore, as well as Mumbai to Dubai and London.

He also asked Air India Express to consider taking over the ground 737 used by Jet Airways. Air India Express is currently experiencing a capacity shortage due to the grounding of its 12,737 MAX for safety reasons.

A temporary stop

Although Jet Airways has totally suspended its operations, the airline insists that it is only a temporary glance. Lenders and management are hopeful that a buyer will come back to resuscitate the beleaguered carrier, but that might be easier said than done.

With many of its aircraft being taken over by lessors and a large number of airport slots sold to other carriers, Jet Airways has less to offer an investor than ever before. Their huge debts, estimated at more than $ 1 billion, and their queues of unpaid workers make overall an unattractive set as investment.

However, investors also have some positives to consider. Jet Airways owns several planes and a valuable loyalty program – Jet Privilege – to consider. The brand itself is well known and has been a trusted entity for many years.

For any potential investor, it will be difficult to weight the options between investing in Jet and creating a new airline from scratch. In many ways, a brand new airline would be easier to implement than Jet Airways would do to live again. Even in this case, no one is abandoning the carrier yet. It will be interesting to see if they can really be saved.