Jet Airways coming back with premium and no frills hybrid model

Jet Airways India , which is undergoing a court-monitored restructuring, plans to return with a hybrid of premium and no-frills services that would allow the former top local airline to claw back market share while managing costs in the fiercely competitive Indian aviation market. The bankrupt airline, now helmed by a new set of owners, will have a two-class configuration where business class passengers will be offered services including free meals, its new CEO Sanjiv Kapoor said in an interview near New Delhi on Wednesday. The economy class will, however, be modeled similar to low-cost carriers where flyers pay for meals and other services, he said. “It’s very difficult in the domestic Indian market to take on the cost of the food and everything else in economy class, where the customer in India chooses primarily on the basis of fares,” said Kapoor, an aviation veteran who took charge of the defunct airline this week. “Let’s just accept that and let’s not burden ourselves with extra cost.” A successful revival of Jet Airways, which collapsed under a pile of debt in 2019 and became the first airline to enter a reformed insolvency resolution process, will be a landmark moment for India’s bankruptcy laws. The new owners -- Dubai-based, Indian-origin businessman Murari Lal Jalan and Florian Fritsch, the chairman of London-based financial advisory and alternative asset manager Kalrock Capital Management Ltd. -- have pledged to make investments of as much as $120m, Kapoor said. Kapoor himself is not new to navigating carriers through turbulent skies. He spearheaded SpiceJet as its COO in 2014, helming it through a time when the low-cost carrier was severely cash strapped.<br/>