The Indian airline Jet Airways has let it be known that they are planning to re-evaluate their activities at Brussels Airport. Together with Brussels Airlines and other Star Alliance partners, Brussels Airport is looking at how new flights to North-America and India can be started.
Jet Airways flies daily between Brussels Airport and Newark and Toronto in North America and Delhi and Mumbai in India. The plans of Jet Airways have been motivated by economic rationale and the continuous evolution of partnerships within the airline industry.
Arnaud Feist, Brussels Airport’s CEO says in a statement: “Ever since the end of 2013 there has been a strategic cooperation between Jet Airways and Etihad Airways and as a result of that, cooperation with the Star Alliance network has been reduced drastically. It was therefore to be expected that Jet Airways was going to re-evaluate their flights to Brussels Airport”.
When Jet Airways first came to Brussels Airport, the airport invested heavily so that the airline could make a large number of simultaneous arrivals and departures during the busiest period of the day. These investments also helped to increase the number of long-distance flights to Brussels Airport and strengthen the Star Alliance network in order to become the preferred hub for several global market leading airline companies.
During the last few years Brussels Airport’s intercontinental network has expanded drastically with the inclusion of US Airways, Air Canada, United Airlines (Chicago), a doubling of the activities of Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, Thai Airways International, Emirates, ANA and a doubling of the number of long-distance planes for Brussels Airlines from four to eight.
The airport is looking at several different options in terms of starting new routes. More specifically they are looking at Brussels Airlines which can hopefully expand their successful operations to New York and Washington with new destinations in North America. Brussels Airport also expects that Star Alliance and other airlines will organise more flights to North America and, either direct or with stop-overs, to India.
About Jet Airways
Jet Airways have been flying to Brussels Airport since 2007. That is the year they established their European hub between India and North America right here at Brussels Airport. Since then they have been carrying more than 750,000 passengers every year on their six daily flights to and from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, New York, Newark and Toronto. More than half of them flew between India and North America.
In 2012 Jet Airways decided for the first time to stop two daily flights to Brussels Airport. More specifically, they were the flights to New York, after Brussels Airlines started servicing this route and those to Chennai. However, the annual number of passengers remained high with an average of 650,000.
November 6, 2015