Jet, Malaysia Airlines sign code-share pact

Jet Airways on Wednesday signed a code-sharing agreement with Malaysia Airlines for flights between Kuala Lumpur and five Indian cities.

Jet will sell seats on Malaysia Airlines’ flights connecting Kuala Lumpur with Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, while Malaysia will sell seats on Jet’s Chennai-Kuala Lumpur flight.

Idris Jala, managing director, Malaysia Airlines, said under the agreement, the two airlines will be able to book passengers on each other’s planes from March 3.

Malaysia Airlines will continue to operate its Kuala Lumpur-Chennai flight.

Naresh Goyal, chairman, Jet, said the airline expects at least $25 million benefit through the tie-up. “We plan to win traffic that was being diverted to other carriers,” he said.

Jala said, “This will allow us to capture untapped traffic from secondary points in India through the five Indian gateways onto Malaysia Airlines’ network.”

Malaysia Airlines witnessed 68-70% load on its Kuala Lumpur-Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur-Delhi route over the third quarter.

Sudheer Raghavan, chief commercial officer, Jet Airways, said the airline had an 80-85% load factor on its Chennai-Kuala Lumpur flights over the last two months.

Jala said Malaysia Airlines expects to see a benefit of 12 million ringgits a year from the deal. “The deals were under negotiation for two years.”

(The writer is in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of Jet Airways)