Jin Air to Launch Flight to Bangkok
By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter
Jin Air, Korean Air's budget affiliate, will start international services on Dec. 21 to Bangkok seven times a week.
Airfare will be about 80 percent of that of full service carriers, the airline said Wednesday. It will be the only domestic airline to fly to Bangkok in the morning.
``We are also considering operating to cities in nations with which Korea has made `open sky' pacts, such as Osaka in Japan and the Shandong Peninsula in China,'' said Kim Jae-kun, president and CEO of Jin Air, in a briefing early this year.
For the plan, the carrier will adopt one more aircraft within the year. It now has four B737-800s.
Jin Air's competitor on the international routes to Southeast Asia is not Korean Air but foreign carriers which take up 60 to 70 percent of the market, especially low cost ones.
The airline has 10-percent discount programs for corporations, available not only to workers of the companies but also their family members. The program will apply to international flights.
One of the strongest points of Jin Air is safety ― the airline was recently listed on the International Air Transport Association IATA Operational Safety Audits (IOSA) registry, an evaluation system to assess the operational management and control systems of airlines.
Jin Air is the first budget airline in Korea to pass the audit, and it obtained approval eight months after the service launch.
Sharing the operational expertise of Korean Air, the budget airline's Gimpo-Jeju route has been gaining more popularity since its launch in July 2008.
For more information, visit www.jinair.com.