An Indian airline is now worth more than American Airlines and United Airlines combined. Jet Airways’ IPO on the Bombay stock exchange last Friday was like a hipster concert: sold out in ten minutes and 50% oversubscribed (via Varnam and Winds of Change). The ~$400M IPO (~$1.2B in buying power) values the company at ~$2.2B at a price-to-earnings multiple of 21.5. That’s a higher valuation than NASDAQ darling JetBlue ($1.9B), American Airlines ($1.5B), Delta ($653M) and the bankrupt United ($142M), but lower than Southwest ($11B).
Meanwhile, the airline with ridiculously attentive service just got clearance to fly New York to Bombay starting in April. The route stops in Brussels, which is my nominee for having the most useless currency left over after a layover, the Belgian franc. Also thanks to the open skies agreement, state carrier Air-India can now fly out of San Francisco.
It’s not clear whether Jet’s bought the JFK landing slots yet, but I’m so looking forward to flying Jet again. And if they ever launch a discount airline, they can nick the sobriquets of the American carriers, calling it Tedwinder or Gana. Like United’s discount cousin, they could chop off the first part of their name and just call it T; or, since they’re a transport company, maybe even T Mobile.
With desis’ legendary respect for intellectual property, it might even fly ;)
Previous post on Jet Airways here.
