Airline business seems to have become the best indicator for the changing fortunes of a nation's economy. Last year, India's bigget airline (by market share) Jet reacted to the slowdown-induced travel blues by removing business class seats from some of its planes on domestic routes to launch an all-economy brand Konnect.
Now with the sharp revival, it has re-introduced eight business class seats on the low-cost brand planes in the first two rows. For passengers, the premium economy called Konnect Select means travelling business class at 20% lower fares than the same class in full service airlines.
"The routes we converted to Konnect in May 2009 had seen occupancy falling to 60% as passengers were shifting to low fare products. The Konnect flights were going almost 80% full and so we decided to convert the remaining 20% to business class on passenger demand," Jet's chief commercial officer Sudheer Raghavan said.
Jet has three brands in its stable now — full service Jet; all-economy JetLite and Konnect with Select. "Depending on the demand from international or domestic side, we can deploy any of these services on those routes," he said.
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