Our Correspondent

Kuala Lumpur , May 19

FULL service private carrier Jet Airways on Thursday landed a fourth overseas flight for a private sector Indian player and its Chief Operating Officer, Mr Peter Leuthi, discounted any scepticism about the airline's prospects in a growingly competitive market on its home ground as well as on international routes.

The flight to the Malaysian capital, operated by a Boeing 737-800, took off from Chennai on Wednesday night and made a feather-smooth touchdown on Thursday morning.

The aircraft stood on the tarmac silhouetted against the massive Kuala Lumpur International Airport as dawn broke. The airport, some 60 km away from downtown Kuala Lumpur, is the world's largest and was opened in 1998. The flight was full, with close to 140 passengers, including 16 in business class.

As it turned back to Chennai within a few hours, there were a hundred passengers aboard, which, as Mr Leuthi noted with some pride later in the day, was no mean achievement for a new player on a highly competitive sector. There was a warm, largely attended Malay-style reception awaiting the passengers and crew in the terminal building despite the early hour. At that reception, as well as at a function organised later in the day at the Berjaya Times Square Convention Centre in town, echoes of a growing economic congruence between India and Malaysia were loud and clear in the comments made on the inaugural flight.

The Indian High Commissioner to Kuala Lumpur, Mr R. L. Narayan, spoke of the event coinciding with a new high in India-Malaysia trade relations and a rapid drive involving Malaysian companies in infrastructure development projects in India. Mr Narayan mentioned the award of contracts to Malaysian entities in a major highway development project in India and possible participation in major airport modernisation projects in several cities. Malaysian companies now have unique opportunities in India, he said.

Mr Narayan said that some 40 Indian companies are now operating from a multi-media information corridor near Kuala Lumpur. He commended that at a point of time when both India and Malaysia emerge as high-growth economies, there will be much going for both if they move in tandem. In this context, he termed the flight-link as a landmark. He said that the flight has led to a quantum leap in connectivity between the two countries.

Referring to the high tourist flow from India to Malaysia, he said the return flow from Malaysia is on an equally healthy scale. Between 250 and 300 visas are being issued by the Indian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur to those visiting India.

Speaking largely in the same vein, Malaysia's Deputy Minister for Tourism, Mr Y. B. Dato Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, hailed the opening of a new gateway to Malaysia that the new flight link represents. He referred to the growing trend in the last two years in the arrival of Indian tourists in Malaysia; in 2003, it was 1,45,000 and 1,72,000 in 2004.

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