Bouyed by the success of the month-old flight from Mumbai to New York, Jet Airways has planned to spread wings all across the world while exploring the possibility of flying to 50 destinations from its European hub of Brussels.

Disclosing this while addressing a press conference just before the launch of Delhi-Brussels-Toronto flight on Tuesday, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal said the carrier would launch the Mumbai-New York flight on October 28 and Mumbai to Shanghai and San Francisco from February.

Connecting cities
Noting that his airlines was examining touching various international routes such as Vancouver, Zurich, Dusseldorf, Darwin, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Tehran, Tel Aviv etc, Goyal said the carrier would connect cities such as Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Amritsar etc in India.

Jet was considering linking Rome and Milan to Los Angeles, Goyal said.  He added that his airline would use Brussels as its European hub for most of the planned international flights. Subject government approvals, the airline has plans to launch flights to five Gulf points of Dubai, Muscat, Doha, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi from Januaray, 2008.

Indians abroad
Noting that 30 million Indians living abroad want to fly by Indian carriers, Goyal, in the presence of civil aviation minister Praful Patel, said he was all for co-operation with the state-run carrier Air India in the areas of ground handling, maintenance, schedules, catering etc.

The aviation minister said Air Inida was free to take any commercial decisions if it helped the airline.
Asked about losses suffered  by JetLight, the new name for Air Sahara which Goyal bought for over Rs 2300 crore, the chairman said the losses have come down by 50 per cent and the airline would break-even by the end of this financial year.

On his plans to raise funds of Rs 400 crore, Naresh Goyal said it has been put on hold for the time being because of the falling dollar rate.

“Our balance sheet is strong and we don’t require money to be raised from the market,” he said.