India’s second largest airline by market share, Jet Airways has leased a wide body aircraft along with 60 of its cabin crew to Abu Dhabi based Etihad Airways, a move that indicates a burgeoning partnership, even before the two airlines ink an equity stake sale. In aviation terms, a wet lease of an aircraft is an arrangement whereby the lessor, in this instance Jet, provides crew, maintenance and aircraft for a consideration.
In turn the lessor takes on the responsibility for supplying and operating the aircraft. The cabin crew will be trained by Etihad in Mumbai over the next three months. This is the second such collaborative agreement between the two carriers who are engaged in protracted discussions for over three months for an equity partnership and a strategic alliance.
Jet had earlier announced a sale and lease back of Jet’s Heathrow-London slots for $70 million in February to Etihad. Confirming this, Jet CEO Nikos Kardassis said the crew was surplus with Jet as it has withdrawn flights to its European hub in Brussels originating from Chennai.
Jet entered into a wet lease agreement with Etihad for one A330-200. Since it stopped the Chennai-Brussels flight, the airline has excess qualified A330 cabin crew based in Chennai. Now it will use this crew for the wet lease operation with Etihad, Kardassis said. Jet has a fleet of over 100 aircraft, including the 11 Airbus A330-200 type that it deploys on long haul international flights.
Jet took delivery of a different series of this aircraft, the A330-300 in December last year and said it will induct another three soon to expand its Airbus wide body aircraft fleet. Jet deployed the 300 series aircraft on the Mumbai-Brussels route. The A330-300 will also replace two leased A330-200 type, the airline had said.
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