Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic inks one of its biggest codeshare agreements with IndiGo

As the international passenger traffic to and from India gradually recovers to the pre-pandemic levels and Indian carriers brace for the dogfight in 2023, Virgin Atlantic has inked a new codeshare agreement with the country’s largest carrier IndiGo.

Flights under the agreement are expected to take off from September 27, subject to regulatory approvals.

To get rolled out in two phases, this is one of the biggest such agreements inked by Richard Branson promoted Crawley-headquartered carrier.

The first phase will enable Virgin Atlantic passengers on the full-service carrier’s (FSC’s) flights from London Heathrow to Delhi or Mumbai to be able to the low-cost carrier (LCC) IndiGo’s flights connecting seven additional destinations of Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Amritsar and Goa.

In the second phase, onward connections will be made available to the cities of Kochi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Vadodara, Indore and Visakhapatnam.

“The key thing behind the agreement is that the demand has returned after the pandemic and our Indian services have been going full. We, therefore, feel this is the right to service 16 additional destinations in India,” chief commercial officer of Virgin Atlantic, Juha Jarvinen told BT immediately after the official announcement.

On being queried if the announcement was also a part of Virgin Atlantic’s strategy to be future-ready in the backdrop of forecasts that India might overtake the UK as the world’s third largest aviation market by 2030, Jarvinen said, “Yes, for we believe the Indian market will continue to grow and we will be looking at cities beyond Delhi and Mumbai for our future expansion.”

Jarvinen also added that they would be exclusively focusing on their arrangement with IndiGo as part of their India strategy.

Importance of codeshares for IndiGo

For IndiGo, codeshare agreements with international carriers like Virgin Atlantic form a key part of its strategy in overseas markets.

"Virgin Atlantic is currently flying three wide-body flights a day. The passengers on those flights will have the ability to connect to a destination on IndiGo’s domestic network. So, we will be able to facilitate a portion of that traffic into India’s hinterland or the UK or the US,” said senior vice president of network planning at IndiGo, Abhijit Dasgupta.

In response to BT’s query on how much of Virgin Atlantic’s traffic was likely to accrue to IndiGo, Dasgupta said, “Overall, we expect anywhere between 10-20 per cent of that traffic to flow into our network over some time.”

Codeshares are commercial agreements between two air carriers that allow one partner to place its two-letter International Air Transport Association (IATA) identification code or denominator on the flight schedule of the other. Simply put, Virgin Atlantic (VS) passengers will be able to fly on connecting flights in India that are operated by IndiGo (6E).

Thus, Virgin Atlantic will be able to offer connecting flights on Indian routes without deploying additional equipment, resources or costs. The same goes for IndiGo passengers flying to the UK or the US.

Including Virgin Atlantic, IndiGo now has codeshare agreements with seven international airlines, viz. Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, American Airlines, Qantas, Air France-KLM and Jetstar.

Meanwhile, Tata group-owned Air India is a part of Star Alliance, a consortium of the world’s 27 leading air carriers. Another Tata group airline, FSC Vistara has six codeshare agreements with Singapore Airlines, United Airlines, Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Canada and Japan Air Lines.

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