Jet Airways connects three major commercial cities with new daily flights

Jet Airways will commence its daily services from Mumbai to San Francisco via Shanghai, effective June 14, 2008 becoming the first Indian carrier to operate daily non-stop flights to Shanghai from Mumbai and onward to San Francisco.

Jet Airways will become the first private Indian airline to connect the financial heart of India, Mumbai with San Francisco. With the famed Silicon Valley to its south – the heart of America’s technology revolution has a large concentration of Indian IT professionals.

Jet Airways’ launch of these new flights will connect the economic and commercial hubs of Mumbai, Shanghai and San Francisco. With the growing importance of trade and commerce between India & China and the strong presence of both the Chinese and Indian communities in the San Francisco area, Jet Airways will cater to large volumes of business and leisure travel between these cities. Jet Airways’ flights to San Francisco via Shanghai will offer its passengers the advantage of reduced regular flying time, benefiting the business traveller.

Jet Airways will operate these transpacific flights with the airline’s brand new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft which will offer unprecedented levels of luxury, privacy and comfort in the air, including First Class suites with the world’s longest airline beds, private closets, dining tables for two, and 23″ flat-screens. Première (business) class seats offer what are considered the most comfortable Business Class seats in the sky that convert to 73″-long totally flat beds. Leg-room in Economy is more generous than the norm – and passengers in all three classes have access to the state-of-the-art Panasonic eX2 entertainment system, complete with 200+ movies, games and endless music choices.

Jet Airways’ flight to San Francisco International Airport will also be the airline’s fourth daily departure from India to North America, following new launches of service from New York’s JFK and Newark airports, and Toronto Pearson International Airport, within the past year. San Francisco is a popular tourist and business destination and with the commencement of these new flights Jet Airways expects the route to prove one of its most popular sectors.

Announcing the launch of these new flights, Mr. Sudheer Raghavan, Chief Commercial Officer, Jet Airways, said, “With the introduction of Jet Airways’ new transpacific service to San Francisco via Shanghai, we continue our airline’s unprecedented expansion throughout North America. This bares testimony to our team’s accomplishments of launching four new long-haul routes in less than a year to North America. This takes forward, our Chairman’s, Naresh Goyal’s vision that’s by 2010, the airline should be rated among the top five airlines in the world. Having changed the way people fly in India, we are now taking to the world our very own brand of service and style.”

Jet Airways currently operates a fleet of 82 aircraft, which includes 10 Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft, 8 Airbus A330-200 aircraft, 54 classic and next generation Boeing 737-400/700/800/900 aircraft and 10 modern ATR 72-500 turboprop aircraft. With an average fleet age of 4.39 years, the airline has one of the youngest aircraft fleet in the world. Jet Airways operates over 385 flights daily.

Flights to 60 destinations span the length and breadth of India and beyond, including New York (both JFK and Newark) Toronto, Brussels, London (Heathrow), Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat and Doha. The airline plans to extend its international operations to other cities in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia in phases with the introduction of additional wide-body aircraft into its fleet.