Jet Airways is in the middle of one of the worst financial crisis. Lessors are grounding more and more aircraft due to nonpayment of dues. Etihad is planning to exit from Jet Airways. More than 50% of the entire fleet is grounded at the moment and it keeps on increasing every day. This has thrown the entire schedule haywire.
Jet Airways has cancelled flights to many destinations altogether and is also reducing frequency on other routes. A couple of days back, I shared a rough idea of how many Jet Airways flights were cancelled from the top six airports in India. The number has increased significantly. Hong Kong is another international destination that is shutting down overnight.
Hong Kong Cancelled
Jet Airways cancelled flights from Delhi to Hong Kong overnight with effect from March 20. It was operated daily by a mix of A330-300 and 777-300ER aircraft. Jet Airways has stopped accepting bookings for the non-stop flight between Mumbai and Hong Kong from March 23, 2019. For now, Jet Airways operates a 777-300ER aircraft but from March 23, an A330-200 was scheduled to operate this route.
Even Manchester-Mumbai route is shutting down indefinitely which is operated by an A330-200. So it is safe to say, it has something to do with the A332, perhaps it has been grounded, or removed for service.
Mumbai to Hong Kong only available on codeshare flights
Apart from Hong Kong, there are several other routes and frequencies that are axed on both domestic as well as international network.
International routes
Jet Airways operates or used to operate in some cases international routes on its widebody apart from narrowbody aircraft. A lot of routes operated by A330/B777 apart from those operated by Boeing 737 have been cancelled.
For the past few days, Jet Airways has been cancelling a lot of international narrowbody routes. These are affected the most as around 50 737 aircraft are currently grounded.
- Singapore: Jet Airways used to operate 3x daily flights from Mumbai and Delhi each. It is now down to just a single daily flight from Mumbai and Delhi. Jet Airways 2x daily flights to Singapore from Bengaluru and daily flights from Pune have been cancelled for days now.
- Bangkok: Jet Airways used to operate 3x daily flights each from Mumbai and Delhi to Bangkok. Currently, Jet Airways is operating a single daily flight from Mumbai and Delhi each.
- Dubai: Jet Airways used to operate 6-7x daily flights from Mumbai to Dubai and 4x daily flights from Delhi. Dubai was one of their strongholds. Jet Airways has completely pulled out of Delhi-Dubai route and has reduced frequency to just a single daily 737 flights from Mumbai to Dubai.
Mumbai to Dubai
- Doha: Jet Airways has already cancelled flights from Delhi to Doha. In addition to it, Jet Airways has reduced frequency from 2x daily to 1x daily on Mumbai-Doha route.
- Abu Dhabi: Jet Airways has completely pulled out of Abu Dhabi overnight.
- Kuwait: Jet Airways has reduced flights to single daily from 2x daily on Mumbai-Kuwait route. Though they are accepting bookings for the single daily flight only from May 1, 2019.
- Riyadh: Jet Airways has cancelled its daily flights from Delhi to Riyadh but continue to operate a daily flight from Mumbai.
- Kathmandu: Jet Airways has reduced flights from Delhi to Katmandu to 2x daily from 4x daily.
- Dhaka: Jet Airways has already cancelled flights from Kolkata to Dhaka and they are cancelling flights to Dhaka from Delhi as well. Only flights from Mumbai to Dhaka are bookable now.
Apart from these a lot of routes were suspended like Delhi – Dammam, Mumbai – Dammam, Mumbai-Bahrain and so on. Jet Airways’ regional international route map looked somewhat like this in October 2018.
Jet Airways regional international route network in October/November 2018
And this is how it looks like now. Just look at how many routes are axed in just a few months.
Jet Airways regional international route network in March/April 2019
I have been tracking Jet Airways network consolidations for months now. If you have read my earlier posts, you may remember that most of the routes that are cancelled now were newly added routes like seventh daily Mumbai – Dubai, second daily Mumbai – Doha and so on.
Longhaul routes
We already shared that Jet Airways has cancelled Mumbai-Manchester route indefinitely. Jet Airways owns 10 Boeing 777-300ER and a couple of A330 aircraft so the impact on flights to Europe will be minimum.
Jet Airways haven’t cancelled any flights to Amsterdam and Paris as of now. All flights are bookable through the entire schedule and are operating normally. They also operate 3x daily flights on Mumbai-London Heathrow and 1x daily on Delhi-London Heathrow route.
Jet Airways international route network in October/November 2018
Jet Airways international route network in March/April 2019
In case of flights to London, only full fare tickets are available on 9W 116/115 Mumbai – London Heathrow from March 31, through April and May. This was the third daily rotation that Jet Airways introduced on Mumbai-London Heathrow route a few years back. Is this frequency also on the way out?
Jet Airways Mumbai-London
Jet Airways Mumbai-London
Domestic routes
Jet Airways has taken a severe blow to its domestic schedule due to the grounding of their workhorse, the 737 NG. Around 50 Boeing 737 are grounded at the moment.
- Mumbai: Jet Airways has two hubs: Delhi and Mumbai. Mumbai is regarded as their fortress. As Mumbai is the most slot constrained airport and slots are rarely available, Jet Airways being one of the largest carriers at Mumbai has to protect it even in hard times. Still, Jet Airways has cancelled 73 departures out 117 departures from Mumbai airport for March 21, 2019. But there are also flights affected due to Mumbai airport closure. Jet Airways has cancelled fewer flights on days not affected by airport closure.
- Delhi: Reducing the impact of cancellations from Mumbai due to groundings has taken a toll at their Delhi hub. Jet Airways had cancelled 62 departures out of Delhi out of 106 published departures on March 18, 2019. On March 21, 2019, the number of scheduled departures is down to 31 departures only!!! This is how badly Delhi is hit due to groundings. Out of those 31 scheduled departures on March 21, 2019, 20 are to be operated by 737-800 (7x to Mumbai, 3x to Amritsar, 2x to Katmandu, 2x to Dehradun, 1 each to Pune, Dhaka, Kochi, Srinagar, Singapore and Bangkok). That’s only 15 domestic departures on 737-800. Jet Airways will operate 9 flights to various destinations like Bhopal, Udaipur, Chandigarh, Jaipur and so-on on their ATR 72-500 fleet. The rest two departures are to London and Amsterdam. There are no departures to any other metro cities except Mumbai. None to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai or Kolkata.
- Bengaluru: Jet Airways has only 3 departures scheduled out of Bengaluru on March 21, 2019; one each to Mumbai, Delhi and Amsterdam. They have cancelled 26 flights out Bengaluru and are doing so for many days.
- Chennai: Jet Airways has only 4 scheduled departures out of Chennai on March 21, 2019: 3 flights to Mumbai and 1 flight to Paris. They have cancelled 16 departures out of Chennai.
- Hyderabad: Jet Airways has 2 scheduled departures to Mumbai on March 21, 2019. Jet Airways has cancelled 4 out of 6 departures.
- Kolkata: Jet Airways has only 2 scheduled departures out of Kolkata on March 21, 2019; one each to Guwahati and Mumbai. Jet Airways has cancelled 8 out of 10 departures.
All of these cancellations aren’t last minute. Some flights have been cancelled since weeks, some since days and some today. As for cancellations, Jet Airways seems to have stopped flights to numerous cities all together like Mangalore, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhuj, Coimbatore and so-on.
Adding to this, lessors are offering SpiceJet 50 grounded Jet Airways 737 NG on dry lease. Truly a sad moment for the airline and its passengers. Hope the crisis resolves soon.
How are you affected by the Jet Airways cancelled flights scenario?
I have my Ironman Championship in the month of July in Zurich. I am travelling in 9W232 (via AWS) to Zurich and coming back in 9W123 (via CDG) to Bombay back. It’s a very big race and I don’t want to take any chances. I have done bookings for my entire family (4 tickets). What would you guys recommend ? Should I cancel all my bookings now and take another flight or Wait in hope that things will improve for Jet. Also what happens to the refund amount if the company goes bankrupt ?
I have my Euro trip in May 2019. Flying from Mumbai to Paris on 22nd May. The flight is operated by Jet Airways but also have code share with Air France. My travel agent informs me that Jet has already put me on another alternate but its the same flight ! With the new booking ref number shared by the agent I am able to view the same booking on Air France website but there also it is mentioned as ‘operated by Jet Airways’ I am totally consufed – is it going to fly or not ?? Please help
I have singapore trip planned at May end. My flight 9W8 is shown as cancelled since 3 weeks. I tried contacting customer care but no answer.no reply to tweets too. Not sure if I should book my land tour of Singapore now.
cna i transfer my JP miles to any other airline or hotel memberships?
BOM-BKK
DEL-BKK
All flights Cancelled from tomorrow : (
May be one of the few, but confused to see people running to Redeem Jpmiles on Amazon vouchers.
I mean worst case scenario, those Jpmiles for Amazon vouchers can anyway be redeemed anytime, right?
After all, seperate company and all.
So unless due to high redemptions even at low value and JP team having expected much lower redemptions and hence less provisions, I don’t see how the value of JPmiles will go down for other redemptions.
@Ajay/other experts in this area,
Even assuming Jet breaks up and some airline decides to buy it out but not keep JP redemptions, even thn, wouldn’t JP give time to redeem at current rates? Or can they change it basis immediate effect?
I am no lawyer, however plain reading of clause 30 of the terms & condition leaves little doubt they can do whatever they want.
“JetPrivilege may at any time, without giving notice, make any change, add to, modify the JetPrivilege Programme, without giving notice of such terms and conditions as well as any Benefits provided in connection with the JetPrivilege programme and any special offers or promotional offers made to any Tier or group of Members,”
So technically, they can withdraw the redemption partners or change the redemption rates.
I think I got lucky. Decided better safe than sorry after the Feb 7th default and booked J awards on EY for the whole family for this summer to Europe. Managed to offload little over 600k miles there. Still had a balance of little over 80k miles. Was thinking of keeping those in the kitty just in case, but after the announcement of EY wanting to sell stake, redeemed those for Amazon vouchers. It has been 3 days and no news on the vouchers though – still shows as pending.
Also, 9W cancelled one leg of an itinerary on 5th March and I asked them to cancel the whole booking. Still waiting on the refund. The signs are not good.
Is your reward ticket issued by 9W with a 589 ticket number? Do you know if EY would honour it if 9W goes under? I am under a similar situation where I have a reward booking issued by 9W for AF flights (the ticket has AF flight numbers, but is from 589 stock).
It is on 589 stock. I spoke with EY and the customer service agent says that the tickets are confirmed with seats etc allocated. I would think that since I’ve paid all the taxes & fees, I don’t see a reason for not honouring the tickets.
Cool. My hope is that Jet stays afloat. My tickets are confirmed with taxes/fees paid too. What I am not sure is when 9W actually pays the partner airline (EY in your case, AF in mine). If the partner airline realizes the money only after the travel, they might decide not to honour 9W’s tickets if they do not have confidence in 9W’s solvency.
An hours worth of research on FlyerTalk has revealed this: If 9W goes bust, then then partner airline has no obligation to honour the award, and will refund taxes & fees. At least with AF that could be the case. A wrinkle here is that the Jet Privilege programme is majority owned by EY. Nobody knows therefore what will happen to awards on EY if 9W goes under. Interesting times. Maybe the LFAL team can shed some light on this.
Contacted EY Twitter support: Their response – “At the moment, all your bookings are confirmed and valid for travel.”
All in the hands of the travel deities now.
Good luck to both of us!
Pls do share the strategy for those 6 figure JP miles.. It is going to be huge blow for all miles and points enthusiasts in India who were slowly building up loyalty portfolios brick by brick. Jet privilege was pivotal for most of us and hardly any other programs come next to it. Will banks convert these Jet co-branded cards to proprietary Amex/Visa cards ..I hold ICICI -Jet and HDFC -Jet co-branded cards.
Hi Ajay
I hold an Jet HDFC diners card and sitting on 6 figures JP miles balance. I have some merchants that do not accept Citibank cards so I am forced to use Jet Diners and it adds approximately 10K JP Miles each month. I was thinking to convert my card into Diners black instead? Any word of advice what to do with both.
Hi there! Because of some urgent meetings I have to travel from Kolkata to London (via Bombay, 9W610 & 9W120) on 5th April. But after following the recent news of jet, I am really worried about my itinerary. Till date none of my flights are cancelled. Still, Should I book another airline and cancel jet tickets or should I wait till 5th! If jet shuts down due to bankruptcy, will they be able to refund? Any leads!
Even I have my holiday with family booked for End of May – Mumbai to London. If i cancel it, will have to pay 50k cancellation.
What is the view on London sector. Do you think they will shut it down.
My Hongkong office trip was cancelled last minute.
I read on another forum about Strong rumours Jet will be pulling one of the three bom-lhr flights by end of the month. Of course no way to confirm. May be you can buy an insurance that covers cancellation costs if airline goes bankrupt?
@Js @Manish, London should be the last to fall for Jet. They have 3 planes a day from BOM-LHR, and if they cancel one flight they can and will easily put you on another one. Unless of course, the airline closes by then. Which I hope is not the case.
I got a mail informing me that my flight BOM – BLR was combined with another flight and departure pushed back 2 hours. However the same happened to me on 9W last April as well. Hoping they keep flying till 12/4
Please recommend the best way to encash jpmiles to get maximum value..
I have some serious JP miles in my account. Can someone please give me a realistic evaluation if these have already gone bust or should I do the Amazon voucher redemption (if at all that is going to be honored still)? Thanks in advance to the experts for your insights.
Ajay An insight here please.
I have around 90K miles remaining. Encashing them for Amazon and M&S vouchers. Really bad conversion rate of 22% but better than nothing. There could be a 20-30% upside (Typical conversion rate I have got on airline redemption is around ~45-50%. Like redeemed my miles earlier for BOM-Paris at 45K miles per person + 3.5k taxes when revenue fare was ~23K. So effectively 45K miles were fetching me 20K worth benefit i.e. 45-50%) if Jet doesn’t go bust and the miles could be redeemed later.
But I am not taking that chance, especially with Air Berlin history.
If you haven’t noticed, since Friday Amazon voucher redemption cost has gone up from 4495 JP miles per 1000 Rs to 5751 JP miles per 1000 Rs.
Same for FK & other redemption options.
I had a BOM-CDG flight on JP Miles in May. Wasn’t going to take a chance that my long-awaited Euro trip vacation be spoiled by all this non-sense done by Naresh Goyal to leverage the election time. Cancelled the ticket and booked a revenue ticket on Emirates.
On a separate note, Jet has a nice policy of only deducting 2000 JP Miles pp per sector even for international flights. That is peanuts compared to the actual cancellation fee. They can clearly make this 8000 JP Miles or something for international flights.
Hey Ankit, I am also having the same issues for my Air France flight operated by Jet Airways. Cancellation fees per person is coming around 11500INR. Anyways just wanted to know if I can use JP Miles to adjust against the cancellation fees. Though the tickets are booked by my agent. So can I use JP Miles here ? My travel to Paris is in June.
I just hope Naresh Goyal is out of this airline.
I got one question for the post as well… few days/weeks back you were vehemently posting buy Jet tickets buy Jet tickets.. best airline etc when Jet kept on reducing all benefits for frequent fliers.. I was platinum 2 years back and they stopped giving upgrades then priority then seats then food etc so can we please stop promoting such companies?
Just note I am a huge fan of your travel tricks etc but on principles we should avoid promoting such unprofessional management.
@GKGupta, I still buy Jet Airways tickets, and in fact my last flight last week was on Jet Airways. Which airline in India is managed well? Please do let me know with proof and not feelings. Then we can put down some standards of what to put out on LFAL. Right now, we will continue to post what we feel is a good deal.
Jet is toast. Goyal tried to play chicken with Etihad and the bank consortium. They did not blink. 9W is most likely going to be broken up for for parts and sold off. 25 years of building one of the better aviation brands, down the toilet.
Jus curious …why do they operate Bom – Pune one ?? Can’t this be put to better route ??
Route is almost mostly sold out and both business and economy is usually almost sold out.
Also works as a feeder route coming into Bombay for European companies based in poona and likewise transports executives to Poona in the morning.
Also don’t quote me on this but i THINK the same plane in the morning does Poona delhi post bom pnq
Actually it is PNQ-BOM-CCU and CCU-BOM-PNQ route. Its the only flight connection between PNQ-BOM and business class tickets are sold at times over Rs 45000/-. Earlier this route was operated by Air Deccan using ATR and in 1980’s Indian Airlines used to operate a Dornier.
Time for Vistara to jump in once again and take-over Jet Airways.
Its so heart-breaking to see JET AIRWAYS like this. I really hope they rise up soon. Its my favourite airline in India. It would be devasting to see them wipe out Nothing is impossible in this world. I hope to see them in there old glory some day. All the best