Indian private carrier Jet Airways will start flying to Saudi Arabia from October, its chairman Naresh Goyal said. “We are going to start services to Saudi Arabia in October,” Goyal told a Dubai-based daily ahead of the airline's inaugural flights from Dubai to India. “This region will constitute a very good percentage of our overall revenues,” he added. There are about 1.4 million expatriate Indians in Saudi Arabia and least 1.4 million across the Gulf. Goyal further said the airline's total revenue is $4 billion, adding that the share of international operations is 40 percent. “In the next two years it is going to be 50 percent.” Jet Airways' inaugural flights from Dubai to New Delhi and Mumbai are scheduled for Aug. 23. Goyal said ever since the airline started flying to the Gulf from January this year, it has seen significant growth in passenger numbers. “We are flying to Doha, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Bahrain, Kuwait, and now Dubai. We are already the first choice of people flying from the Gulf to India,” he said. “Our market share is already 60 percent among Indians traveling to India from the Gulf,” Goyal added.
