Did Jet Airways' mega ticket sale take off successfully?

Moneycontrol Bureau

The mega ticket sale offered by private sector carrier - Jet Airways seems to have taken off successfully. The airline had put on block around 20 lakh seats at around 50 percent discount for bookings done from February 21 to 24.

Though the airline has not given out any statistics on the quantum of tickets sold, online travel portals claim to have disposed off their share of inventory.

The airline's spokesperson said that the company is still collating data on tickets sold during sale period and will get back on the query soon.

However, travel websites are gung-ho about selling good volumes last week. "Jet Air's discounted fare scheme received tremendous response from customers. Our ticket sales almost doubled post announcements by various airlines," said Keyur Joshi, co-founder and chief commercial officer at makemytrip.com.

Surely, online booking engines did good business during the sale period but none of them divulged amount of tickets sold. "It is difficult to say how much inventory we sold during the four-day sale period but the traffic was huge on those days," concurred Sonu Sodhi from Yatra.com adding that more seats were available on routes that had 50-60 percent occupancy then the ones which already had booked 80 percent loads.

Meanwhile, industry observers are apprehensive of possible arbitrage opportunities arising out it. Many believe, travel agents may have bought tickets at discounted ticket and may sell the same at a later date.

"It was a very good marketing gimmick adopted by the airline," Sharan Lilaney, an aviation analyst from Angel Broking told moneycontrol.com.

"Of the 1.6 crore seats that Jet Air has on offer annually, hardly 12 percent of it was available at discounted rates. By recording around 75 percent load factors in past few months, the airline has already achieved breakeven level in most sectors. Anything above this, can be considered incremental profit," he said.