Summary
- IndiGo and Qantas have expanded their codeshare partnership, allowing IndiGo’s passengers to access key destinations in Australia, starting with Melbourne and later including Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane.
- The partnership enables seamless connections for IndiGo customers to fly to Singapore and then connect to Qantas flights to Melbourne.
- IndiGo has also formed codeshare agreements with other major global airlines, including British Airways, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, American Airlines, and Air France-KLM.
Indian low-cost airline IndiGo and Australia’s flag carrier Qantas have enhanced their codeshare partnership by including key destinations in Australia as part of the deal. The Qantas partnership is one of many codeshare deals that IndiGo has signed with foreign carriers as it looks to broaden its long-haul network globally.
Sydney, Melbourne, and more…
IndiGo’s passengers will be able to access four key destinations in Australia – Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane – as part of its codeshare deal with Qantas, starting with Melbourne, with the remaining three cities to be added in the coming weeks.
Photo: Angel DiBilio | Shutterstock
IndiGo has said that the new codeshare routes allow its customers to fly to Singapore and connect seamlessly to Qantas’ flights between Singapore and Melbourne. Pieter Elbers, Chief Executive Officer, IndiGo, commented,
“We are excited to introduce these new connecting flights to Australia, in partnership with Qantas, connecting on IndiGo’s flights from India to Singapore. The two airlines are the market leaders in their respective countries and this agreement will strengthen the bond between the two countries. For IndiGo, placing its code on another airline and connecting over a mid-point (Singapore) is only the 2nd one of its kind. With this we are now enabling the vast IndiGo network to connect with Qantas’ unmatched reach, we create more opportunities for trade and tourism between both nations.”
Going strong
Qantas’ codeshare partnership with IndiGo was launched in 2022 with 14 routes, including many key Indian cities, such as Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai, and Pune, among others. The initial agreement included 11 routes from Bengaluru (based on Qantas Sydney-Bengaluru service) and three from Delhi (for its Melbourne-Delhi flight).
In January this year, the partnership was further enhanced to include an additional eight IndiGo destinations – Guwahati, Indore, Chandigarh, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Nagpur, Thiruvananthapuram, and Visakhapatnam.
The India-Australia sector has seen much better connectivity in the last few years, with both Air India and Qantas launching non-stop flights. Air India recently announced its Mumbai-Melbourne non-stop service in addition to its existing routes from Delhi to Sydney and Melbourne. In November, there are 188 return flights between the two countries. This, of course, does not include the connecting flights that many passengers take from popular hubs such as Singapore and Malaysia.
IndiGo’s codeshare partnerships
IndiGo’s Qantas deal is one of its several such partnerships with major global airlines. It recently announced an agreement with British Airways, adding BA’s code on its flights to three Indian cities – Thiruvananthapuram, Rajkot, and Vadodara.
Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock
Its partnership with Turkish Airlines has seen swift expansion in recent months and now includes several major European destinations and five US cities – New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco.
IndiGo also enjoys similar agreements with other major carriers, such as Qatar Airways, American Airlines, and Air France-KLM.
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