Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic’s transatlantic joint venture is being bolstered with codeshare connections between destinations across the US and India via Heathrow.
Passengers flying with Virgin’s Indian codeshare partner Jet Airways will be able to connect via the London hub to nine US cities served by Delta – Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
At the same time, those flying with Delta and Virgin Atlantic between the US and India will be able to connect onto Jet Airways’ flights to Mumbai and Delhi via Heathrow and onward to 20 destinations within India.
The new Delta codeshare destinations from tomorrow (November 2) include Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Calicut, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Pune, Trivandrum and Vadodara.
The new connections complement Delta and Jet Airways destinations available through existing codeshare agreements via Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris Charles de Gaulle airports.
Virgin Atlantic plans to expand its existing codeshare with Jet Airways next year by placing its flight code on Virgin operated flights from Heathrow to 10 US cities including Miami, Newark, San Francisco and Washington.
This would expand an existing codeshare with Jet Airways on flights between five Indian cities and Heathrow via Delhi.
Delta senior vice president Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, Nat Pieper, said: “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.”
Jet Airways director Gaurang Shetty 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 United States of America 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.”
Virgin Atlantic commercial executive vice president, Erik Varwijk, said: “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 ten US destinations via Heathrow – helping to further boost tourism and trade and attracting more customers to Virgin Atlantic.”