Jet may phase out JetLite, bring operations under Konnect

Jet Airways plans to bring all its low-fare operations under the Jet Konnect brand and phase out the JetLite brand completely.

The country’s largest airline by passengers carried believes that this move will simplify operations and remove the current confusion over two similar low-fare brands — Jet Konnect and JetLite.

Though no timeline is available for this transition, sources in the aviation industry and some officials of Jet confirmed that internal discussions have been held on phasing out JetLite.

These talks have gained momentum after the recent Bombay High Court order, which ended a messy legal battle between Jet and Sahara India Commercial Corporation.

The battle has its origins in Jet’s April 2007 purchase of Sahara Airlines — which operated Air Sahara — and later rebranding it to JetLite.

This court order will now enable Jet to carry out several business operations, including developing land, selling and leasing back of planes and rebranding JetLite, all of which had come under a cloud because of the litigation.

Despite several attempts, a Jet Airways spokesperson did not return calls to confirm this report.

In 2009, when the aviation business went into a tailspin, Jet had no option but to float a new brand (Konnect) to increase capacity on low fare routes since it could not do so under JetLite. Analysts point out that now, Jet Airways is free to run JetLite the way it likes and take outstanding deliveries of planes from Boeing.

But why does Jet want to phase out the JetLite brand? An airline official explained that doing so would create some business class seats on low-fare routes. Konnect aircraft already offer some business class seats at lower fares whereas JetLite flights are all-economy.

It would mean reconfiguring some of the JetLite aircraft, and in the short to medium term, could result in actually lowering low fare capacity till new planes are brought in.

As of now, six out of 10 flights of Jet are in no-frills category and JetLite comprises just about 24% of the group’s overall low-fare operations.

Transition of JetLite to Konnect would involve repainting the fleet of 18 Boeing 737 aircraft but the cost is not expected to be significant.

While one avaition analyst DNA spoke to said there was a possibility that Jet Airways would merge Konnect within itself, another analyst said he saw no reason for the airline to do so since Jet and JetLite have separate scheduled operator permits and distinct fleets.

Konnect uses the on-ground and in-flight services of Jet Airways staff and it operates under the Jet Airways flight code ‘9W’. In 2009, Konnect was using two Boeing 737-800s and six ATRs on 19 routes with 54 flights daily across 38 cities.