A new Flight launch Mumbai-Kuwait by Jet Airways

Jet Airways to launch a direct daily flight Mumbai-Kuwait from 29th March’09. Earlier it was only Kochi-Kuwait flight being operated by Jet Airways; this would be the second daily service in Kuwait from India by Jet Airways. The airline is already operating its daily flights in the Middle East countries like Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Dubai, Doha and Bahrain. The Jet Chief Executive is hoping that this flight service proves also to be popular amongst the passengers in Kuwait.

The Flight will depart Mumbai at 7:00 pm and reach Kuwait at 8:30 pm local time and on return it will depart at 9:30 pm from Kuwait and reach Mumbai at 4:00 am in the morning. About 4.82 million Indian are residing in Gulf countries out of which 550,000 are living in Kuwait so jet airways definitely going to be popular amongst the ones residing in Kuwait.

UDF to be collected by Airlines at the time of selling tickets

User Development Fee (UDF) will now be collected from the passengers by the airlines, at the time of tickets selling. The charges will not be exceeding Rs 5 per passenger and will not be passed on to the passengers in any manner. Last month in February government approved charging UDF by DIAL at the rate of Rs 200 from each domestic passenger and Rs 1300 from international passenger. The UDF came into effect from March 1st for next 3 Years. This is really going to affect the prices of air tickets in India.

The following people will be exempted from paying UDF to the airlines:
- The persons travelling on infants tickets issued by the airlines.
- Diplomatic Passport Holders.
- Crew of Airlines on duty.
- Official duty persons on aircraft operated by Indian Armed forces.
- Transfer/Transit passengers (less then 6hrs stay at IGI Airport).
- The passengers departing from airport due to technical faults in plane or not suitable weather conditions for flying.

Airlines affected after Rupee hit a record low of Rs 51.92 per dollar

There has been seen a fall in Rupee, domestic airlines are likely to revise all their targets, as 30% of expenses of airlines are denominated in dollars. Airlines such as Jet Airways, Spice Jet, Air India and Kingfisher airlines usually make their payments in dollars towards the rentals of their leased aircrafts, maintenance, foreign crew and pilots. Rupee can touch 54 by the end of this month; this has been predicted by some financial firms.

Airlines pay a rental of Rs 40 Lac for the single aircraft, which has now increased to Rs 50 Lac due to the decrease in value of a rupee. This has affected many things including parking, employee costs and navigation charges. The fall in rupee is definitely going to play a major role in this year’s losses in airlines industry. The losses have been estimated for this year, it would be Rs 10,000 crores which is more than double of last year’s losses which was 4,000 crores.