Airlines Deals

Jet Airways plans to operate regular flights to China and the US and increase daily flights between India and Britain to around nine in due course, chairman Naresh Goyal has said.

“We are looking at China, the US. We plan to start Zurich, Munich, Frankfurt, Rome and Milan,” Goyal said in an interview published in the ‘’Guardian'’ on Friday.

He said Jet has already added routes to Colombo, Singapore, Kathmandu and Kuala Lumpur.

“I would like to see in the next two, three years that we build eight, nine flights a day to the UK. We want to operate to Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and we are looking at Gatwick,” Goyal said.

He said there are 1.4 million Indian-origin people living in Britain and the Civil Aviation Authority expects 1.5 million people to fly from Britain to India this year, nearly three times the number five years ago.

“The UK is a natural (destination) because of the Indians living here. We know the market. There is an automatic affinity,” he said.

The 57-year-old Goyal said many of the estimated 28 million Indians living overseas already know about his airline.

But the company wanted a wider audience and had hired design agency Landor Associates to work on the brand, he said.

“We not only want Indians, we also want English, Europeans living here (to travel by Jet Airways)… We want to be one of the best five airlines in the world,” he added.