Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic have announced expanded co-operation with Jet Airways to provide codeshare connections for customers between key destinations across North America and India via London Heathrow. Effective November 2, 2016, Jet Airways customers flying between India and North America will be able to connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Delta, which include Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
In turn, Delta and Virgin Atlantic customers flying between North America and India will be able to connect with Delta codeshare onto Jet Airways’ flights to Mumbai and Delhi via London Heathrow and onward to 20 destinations within India. The new Delta codeshare destinations include Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Calicut, Chennai, Kochi, Coimbatore, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Pune, Trivandrum and Vadodara.
“With up to 11,000 people flying daily between India and North America, and with trade and tourism flows increasing between the US, UK and India, we are giving our customers more versatile schedule options between North America and India. For the first time, customers will be able to hold a single Delta ticket from North America through London to India providing co-ordinated customer service all the way through to their final destinations,” said Nat Pieper, senior vice president – Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, Delta Air Lines.
Gaurang Shetty, whole-time director, Jet Airways, added, “This expanded co-operation over London Heathrow, now allows us to offer our guests travelling to North America, multi-gateway connectivity over all of Jet Airways’ European destinations. The codeshare arrangement with Delta Air Lines will enable Jet Airways guests to seamlessly connect to 24 cities across the US over London, Paris and Amsterdam. Further, our loyalty programme partnership will also enable the frequent flyers of both carriers to accrue and redeem their miles across each other’s entire network.”
In 2017 and subject to government approvals, Virgin Atlantic will expand its existing codeshare with Jet Airways, placing its marketing code on Virgin Atlantic operated flights from London Heathrow to 10 cities across North America including Miami, Newark, San Francisco and Washington.
Virgin Atlantic already operates a codeshare with Jet Airways on flights between five Indian cities and London Heathrow via Delhi.
Erik F Varwijk, EVP, commercial, Virgin Atlantic, commented, “We are pleased to announce an extended codeshare with Jet Airways which will provide even more options for our customers in North America and India. From spring 2017, we will offer seamless connections between five Indian cities and 10 US destinations via London Heathrow – helping to further boost tourism and trade and attracting more customers to Virgin Atlantic.”
