• Code: 9W
• Name: Jet Airways
• Tel: +32 (0) 2 709 09 09
• Fax: +32 (0) 2 709 09 00
• E-Mail: infobenelux@jetairways.com
• Foundation: 1993
• Country: India
• Web: www.jetairways.com

History

Jet Airways started Indian commercial airline operations on 5 May 1993 with a fleet of four leased Boeing 737-300 aircraft. In January 1994, a change in the law enabled Jet Airways to apply for scheduled airline status, which was granted on 4 January 1995. It began international operations to Sri Lanka in March 2004. While the company is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, 80% of its stock is controlled by Naresh Goyal (through his ownership of Jet’s parent company, Tailwinds) and has 10,017 employees (at March 2007).

Indian businessman Naresh Goyal, who already owned Jetair (Private) Limited, which provided sales and marketing for foreign airlines in India, set up Jet Airways as a full-service scheduled airline to compete against state-owned Indian Airlines. Indian Airlines had enjoyed a monopoly in the domestic market between 1953, when all major Indian air transport providers were nationalised under the Air Corporations Act (1953), and January 1994, when the Air Corporations Act was repealed, following which Jet Airways received scheduled airline status.
 
Jet Airways and Air Sahara were the only private airlines to survive the Indian business downturn of the early 1990s. On 12 April 2007, Jet Airways agreed to buy out Air Sahara for 14.5 billion rupees (US$ 340 million). Air Sahara was renamed JetLite, and was marketed between a low-cost carrier and a full service airline. In August 2008, Jet Airways announced its plans to completely integrate JetLite into Jet Airways.

In October 2008, Jet Airways and rival Kingfisher Airlines announced an alliance which primarily includes an agreement on code-sharing on both domestic and international flights, joint fuel management to reduce expenses, common ground handling, joint utilization of crew and sharing of similar frequent flyer programmes.
In May 2009, Jet Airways launched another low-cost airline, Jet Airways Konnect. The new airline uses spare aircraft from Jet Airways' routes that were discontinued due to low passenger load factors. It also uses the same operator code as Jet Airways. The decision to launch a new brand instead of expanding the JetLite network was taken considering the regulatory delays involved in transferring aircraft from Jet Airways to JetLite, as the two have different operator codes.

On 2 May 2007 Jet Airways had announced Brussels Airport as its European hub for its Trans-Atlantic North American operations.
Through 2009, Jet Airways has been adding services to new destinations in the Middle East and connecting existing international destinations to additional cities in India.