Jet Airways to launch San Francisco-Shanghai-Mumbai daily service from 5 May

Jet Airways' now-on, now-off San Francisco-Shanghai-Mumbai service will finally kick off on 5 May 2008. The daily service will take off from San Francisco International Airport for Shanghai, and fly onwards to India, said founder and chairman, Jet Airways, Naresh Goyal.

With the launch, Jet Airways will become the first Indian airline to fly from San Francisco to Mumbai and only the second airline worldwide to fly non-stop from San Francisco to Shanghai.

The flight from San Francisco International Airport will also be the airline's fourth daily North American departure to India, following recent launch of services from New York's JFK and Newark airports, and Toronto Pearson International Airport. Introduction of these services have taken place over the past year.

"With the introduction of this new transpacific route to India aboard Jet Airways," observed Goyal, "we continue our airline's unprecedented expansion throughout North America. I am immensely proud of our team's accomplishments of launching four new long-haul routes in less than a year."

The new Jet Airways transpacific services aboard Boeing 777-300ER aircraft will offer unprecedented levels of luxury, privacy and comfort in the air, including First Class suites with the world's longest airline beds, private closets, dining tables for two, and 23" flat-screens.

Première (business) class pods offer what are considered the most comfortable Business Class seats in the sky that convert to 73"-long totally flat beds. Leg-room in Economy is more generous than the norm - and passengers in all three classes have access to the state-of-the-art Panasonic eX2 entertainment system, complete with 200+ movies, games and endless music choices - heard through Bose noise-cancelling headphones.

Jet Airways currently operates a fleet of 80 aircraft, which includes 10 Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft, 8 Airbus A330-200 aircraft, 53 classic and next generation Boeing 737-400/700/800/900 aircraft and 9 modern ATR 72-500 turboprop aircraft.

With an average fleet age of 4.30 years, the airline has one of the youngest aircraft fleet in the world. Jet Airways operates over 370 flights daily.

Its flights to 59 destinations span India and beyond, including New York (both JFK and Newark) Toronto, Brussels, London (Heathrow), Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat and Doha.

The airline plans to extend its international operations to other cities in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia in phases with the introduction of additional wide-body aircraft into its fleet.