KARACHI, June 8: JS Air and Airblue’s collaborated first flight would take off on June 17. Destination: Gwadar. At a press briefing held jointly by JS Air and Airblue on Thursday, Air Commodore (retd) Munawar Alam Siddiqui, Chairman of JS Air, said the event would mark a milestone in the history of aviation in Pakistan, since it was the first-ever joint venture between any two airline operators in Pakistan.

The JS Air chairman was flanked by Shahid Khakan Abbasi, chief operating officer of Airblue, Air Cdr (retd) Rizwan Yusuf, chief executive of JS Air and Nadia Siddiqui, group head of corporate communications at JS Group.

Mr Siddiqui said the joint venture partners planned to start operations from the first ‘socio-economic route’ i.e. Gwadar-Karachi. “The volume of flights would soon be increased, with the addition of several other short haul destinations,” he said, adding that the shared vision of the joint partners was to connect socio-economic areas to bigger cities in the country.

It was observed that JS Air was a recently-launched charter aircraft company by the JS (Jahangir Siddiqui) Group that operates in diversified fields. The group core is JS Finance which runs companies in asset management, investment banking, insurance and trade finance, apart from five vertical businesses.

Airblue, designated by the government as the second national carrier, has been operating since 2004 and has a fleet of five Airbus A-320 and A-321 aircraft.

The three airmen sitting on the dais answered reporters’ queries. It was stated that JS Air was entering the aviation industry with two ‘Beach craft 1900 aircraft acquired from the US. The 19-seater (all windows and aisles) aircraft would initially undertake six flights a week on Karachi-Gwadar-Karachi route.

The joint venture with Airblue would synergize operations. Such flights called “commuter operations”, though an unfamiliar term in Pakistan was said to be popular all over the world, with some 450 planes operating in the US alone, as “commuter operators”. The joint venture partners planned to add more aircraft in the fleet in August. One month after the commencement of operations on the Gwadar sector, they planned to introduce a second frequency on the Gwadar route to operate in the afternoon.

Rizwan Yusuf said: “JS Air is a regional air charter business established to serve relatively low passenger-volume routes for commercial airlines as well as providing executive charter services to the oil and gas industry and other leading businesses.”

About Airblue, Shahid Abbasi observed that the airline operated 24 flights daily, serving Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar and Faisalabad within Pakistan. In 2005, it commenced short-haul international operations to Dubai and the airline was now finalizing plans to operate additional long-haul routes. “Airblue recently placed a $790 million order with Airbus to purchase 10 additional aircraft with deliveries commencing in 2008,” Mr Abbasi said.