Mumbai, Oct. 27: Jet Airways slid deeper into the red in the second quarter ended September 30, suffering a net loss of Rs 406.69 crore.

The private airline blamed the poor performance on three factors: the lean monsoon season when people are reluctant to fly, weakening yields amid intense competition in the market, and the five-day strike by pilots last month which had led to a revenue loss of Rs 80 crore.

Total revenues shrank 25 per cent to Rs 2,325.02 crore from Rs 3,121.34 crore in the year-ago period.

The airline had suffered a loss of Rs 225 crore in the first quarter ended June 30. As a result, its loss for the half year has swelled to Rs 632.02 crore, a 162 per cent increase over the level of Rs 241.15 crore in the year-ago period.

The airline slashed its overall expenditure by 31.6 per cent to Rs 2,516.65 crore from Rs 3,681.84 crore in the same quarter a year ago. Fuel expenditure was down 53.8 per cent to Rs 780 crore from Rs 1,687.81 crore a year ago.

However, the airline moaned about the 17.4 per cent increase in fuel costs over the April-June quarter which, it said, had raised fuel costs by Rs 108.3 crore on a trailing quarter basis. The airline has now converted almost two-thirds of its seating capacity on its 85 planes to a no-frills service following the launch of its Jet Airways Konnect service in May.

Jet Airways was hoping that the switch would boost its fortunes. But it has seen mixed results. The company said the seat factor on its Jet Konnect service had topped 75 per cent against an overall domestic seat factor of 69.8 per cent in the second quarter.

At present, 27 of its 85 planes have been deployed on the Jet Konnect routes which link five metros — Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Calcutta — with other towns and cities across the country.

The airline said it carried 2.79 million revenue passengers during the quarter, down 1.2 per cent over the year-ago period. Jet said its seating capacity had risen 2.5 per cent following the conversion to the no-frills Jet Konnect service. It maintained the full benefit of this conversion would show up in the third quarter.

Revenues from the international operations account for 62 per cent of its total revenues at Rs 1467.6 crore against 53 per cent or Rs 1734.1 crore in the second quarter of last year. It said it had achieved a seat factor of 80.6 per cent on its international routes as against 66 per cent in the year-ago quarter.