Asia-Pacific: June 2007 Archives

Jet Airways has raised the bar once again with its new first class product.

As my colleague Mark Pilling wrote in Paris Air Show Blog 7, Jet's new Boeing 777-300ER turned out to be the showcase of the static display this year. I heard several airline chief executives toured the 777-300ER during the show and raved about Jet's new first class product and how it is even better than the first class product Singapore Airlines introduced on its 777-300ERs late last year.

So I asked Jet chairman and founder Naresh Goyal who he hosted on board the aircraft at Paris and he quickly rattled off an impressive list which included the chief executives of Air France, Cathay Pacific Airways, Delta Air Lines, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Japan Airlines and Qatar Airways. But none of these airlines will be able to copy Jet Airways because the seats were designed exclusively for Jet by B/E Aerospace. In fact, Jet Airways general manager corporate planning Gilbert George says the carrier has a patent on the seats.

Indigo Airlines founder and co-owner Rahul Bhatia captured many of the headlines at the 2005 Paris Air Show, when he placed a surprise order for 100 Airbus A320s, without even attending. This year Bhatia attended the show but did not create nearly as much attention.

I chased down Bhatia at the chalet of business aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft. He was at the chalet to sign a contract making Bhatia's other business, InterGlobe, the Indian sales agent and service centre for Hawker Beechcraft. The signing ceremony, which Indian civil aviation minister Praful Patel also participated in, only attracted a handful of journalists and photographers.

So I asked Bhatia why he decided to come to the Paris Air Show this year to sign a deal with Hawker Pacific when two years ago he did not show up to sign a much bigger contract with Airbus? "I have a genetic disorder," he joked.

If Peter Foster, chief executive of Kazakhstan's Air Astana, has grown tired of people asking him about the recent spoof documentary movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, he doesn't let it show.

Asked during an interview with Airline Business whether he expected the movie to boost tourism to the central Asian nation, Foster said Air Astana had seen "a huge upsurge in web hits" to its internet site since the film was released.

He says that while Kazakhstan is "too far away [from western Europe] to become a mass tourist destination", the Borat movie has increased public interest in the country. "Tourism is not our core business, but there is definitely a market for tourism here, particularly for special interest travel," adds Foster.