Jet launches Hong Kong flight

Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways launched its first flight for Hong Kong from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) in Mumbai on Monday.

Jet Airways is the first private carrier to have started a service to Hong Kong from India.

"We see it as a strategic market and having strong prospects too. Hong Kong is also the Gateway to China, so we are very optimistic about picking up international traffic on this route," the airline's chief executive officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said at the launch.

Prock-Schauer said he was expecting 110,000 passengers on the Mumbai-Hong Hong route and the same number from the proposed Delhi-Hong Kong flight over a period of time. The airline has deployed its state-of-the-art Airbus 330-200 on this newly introduced international route, with premier and economy class.

Hong Kong becomes the airline's 16th international destinations, with ten destinations launched in the last nine months alone.

It has plans to expand its international operations to cities across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Jet Airways is aiming for a 50 per cent contribution from its overseas operations towards its total revenues in the next two- to three-year period.