Private Indian carrier Jet Airways will further strengthen its relationship with minority shareholder Etihad Airways when it launches a fourth route to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) city of Abu Dhabi from India. The airline will introduce a daily flight from Chennai from January 16, 2014, adding to its existing daily services from Delhi, Kochi and Mumbai.

“Jet Airways has already established itself as a prestigious brand in the intensely competitive Indo-Gulf sector in a relatively short period of time. This achievement has been on accord of the quality of our in-flight product, which is more than ably complemented by our onboard service standards which are par with the best in the world,” explained Gaurang Shetty, senior vice president, commercial, Jet Airways.

“We are confident that the daily service from Abu Dhabi to Chennai will prove immensely popular with our guests. Introduction of these flights is an important landmark in the emergence of the airline as India’s premier international airline,” he added.

The new flight, to be operated by Boeing 737-800 equipment, will also serve the Saudi Arabian destination of Dammam as an extension from Abu Dhabi although this sector is only available when connecting from/to another Jet Airways operating flight from/to India. The Indian carrier will also introduce a new daily flight between Kochi and Dammam, the only non-stop service in this market.

Following the launch of these new connections later this month, Jet Airways will become India’s first private airline to operate over 50 daily flights to multiple destinations in the Gulf. These include daily departures from and to Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai, Doha, Kuwait, Sharjah, Jeddah, Dammam, Muscat and Riyadh.

Last year there were more than 35,000 flights from India to the UAE, approximately 100 rotations per day. In the table below we look at the leading carriers in this market based on seat capacity during 2013. Emirates Airline dominates with a 36.7 per cent share, with Air Arabia second with a 12.3 per cent share, Jet Airways third (10.8 per cent), Air India Express fourth (10.5 per cent) and Air India fifth (9.2 per cent).

Jet Airways’ Indian rivals IndiGo Airlines and SpiceJet witnessed the largest rise in this market in the last year with capacity up 118.2. per cent and 669.7 per cent, respectively, increasing their shares of the market 3.6 and 3.3 percentage points. Jet has increased its own capacity by around a quarter between 2012 and 2013 with its capacity share rising 1.4 per cent