Tall claims and short action... Review on Jet Airways

For an average airline passenger in India, Jet Airways is a brand that reminds of ‘premium ‘ service. After all, it is a private airline and the other major domestic carrier, Indian Airlines is a government run airline with sloppy staff, blinding bureaucracy and old cabin crew !! Jet Airways presents a bunch of young girls dressed ‘smartly ‘( read above knee skirts) and hot towel and lemon juice …. Vow !! what a blessing it should be, right ?

Wrong !! Agreed, Jet airways has a young cabin crew and also facilities to purchase and print e-tickets and allows you to change your schedule over the web with just your PNR number (of course for a price!!). Yet, the airline has a crew whose attitude is snobbish. They carry a ‘holier than thou’ attitude and a ‘ know it all ‘ (so typical of empty vessels) approach that irks a passenger. The real value addition an airline provides a passenger (and his baggage) is that it moves him/her from place A to place B in a quick time.

The no frills airlines do just this much for a reasonable deal and the ‘premium’ airlines present some nice looking girls and guys in the cabin crew, feed you with stuff you would have never had on a day your grey matter functioned normally and claim that they offer ‘premium ‘ service ( why wouldn t they – The customer pays for them all, including those girls and their uniform).

Jet Airways is fine – on a day your stars were lucky and your flight and other flights had a normal day. But, for an airline that calls itself a ‘premium service’ provider, it should be fine even when things go wrong – Sadly, the answer is not yes. If you happen to be on a flight that is overbooked or only half full, be prepared for a long ordeal and indifferent staff ( they are too busy !!) . An example of this was a week ago when the 3 AM flight from Mumbai to Bangalore was cancelled, clubbed with Mumbai – Hyderabad. Here comes the icing – Jet decided to fly from Mumbai to Bangalore and then from Bangalore to Hyderabad, penalizing the hyderabad passengers for no fault of theirs ( apart from choosing to fly Jet airways). Sure, the decision was made by someone whose brain was proportionate to the length of the skirts their colleagues wear). When a passenger questioned the staff why they flew to bangalore first and all the way back to Hyd , the ‘premium’ reply he got was that it is the airline s prerogative to choose the route. When the inter-terminal shuttle ( from the international terminal to the domestic terminal) took ages to arrive, Jet airways staff invented a convenient excuse – that they are not responsible for it and it is only a ‘courtesy coach’. Too much of courtesy to handle for a passenger who paid through his nose for a ‘premium ‘ service provider !!.

The arrogance carries all the way to the top, to chairman Naresh Goyal, who tried every trick on the book and out of the law to stop Tatas from getting a license to start an airline venture with Singapore Airways. For those who do not know, the ‘Jet ‘ brand name used by the airline is not theirs and is under litigation. Add to this the 26 shell companies under which Jet Airways operates in a country that does not come under the jurisdiction of Indian courts, you will know how the Cheating Executive Officer has become a billionaire with the money of passengers.

I am sure there are stories of other airlines screwing up their passengers, but Jet is one step ahead – it prevents competition, ensuring that they stay the only ‘ premium’ airline in India.

It must be however, added that if you hold shares of Jet Airways, you may see its value go up in the short term. But, in the long run, the stock is valued way above its capacity to produce wealth for its owners. In a market where the Price – Earnings Ratio ( It is the market price of the share divided by Earnings per share) is averaging 15, Jet has a ratio of close to 70 . ( For those who are not market savvy, this simply means that the market price of share is 70 times its Earnings). It has buyers because it is the only airline in India that has gone public. Even the shares seem to suffer the insecurity of competition.

Premium service is not just recruiting good looking staff and providing lemon juice and hot towel – It is providing what the passenger wants at a price better than competition. Jet Airways stops competition by employing backdoor tactics and has a rude and arrogant staff. To top it all, it has a chairman who operates in a safe haven to escape legal action and has employed every trick to ensure that the airline costs are high for the passenger. Sufficient reasons for me to give a poor rating , in spite of the airline claiming itself as a premium service airline.