Europe’s Flybe has announced the signing of its codeshare partnership with Star Alliance member Air India (AI), enabling travellers using its multi-frequency Birmingham services from Belfast City, Edinburgh and Glasgow to book seamless flights onward to Delhi. Under the unilateral agreement, AI will place its marketing code on these Flybe flights.
Seats are available for booking via the Air India website or through local travel agents with travel effective from June 1, 2016. Passengers who are members of Air India’s Frequent Flier Programme will accrue mileage points for journeys taken on flights carrying the AI flight number.
The partnership offers several benefits to customers who will be able to use a single ticket to fly from their local airport to Delhi via a seamless connection through Birmingham Airport onto AI’s daily flights to New Delhi.
Saad Hammad, CEO, Flybe, commented, “Our new codeshare agreement with Air India is another development for Flybe and tangible evidence of our continued growth. It further strengthens our commitment to connecting our regional customers with our ‘One Stop to the World’ proposition. We can now give customers in the UK regions convenient access to the Indian subcontinent through Birmingham Airport. This relieves them of the need to undertake long road or rail journeys to and from the UK’s congested South East hub airports. It will also serve in contributing further to local economies by encouraging inbound travel from South East Asia.”
Ashwani Lohani, chairman and managing director, Air India, said, “The UK is the residence of large number of Indian diaspora. However, this codeshare agreement will be a huge benefit not only to the Indians living in the UK, but also to tourists travelling to and from domestic sectors of the UK and India. AI is continuously working towards providing seamless connectivity to its passenger across routes and with our agreement with Flybe, AI passengers will have an unmatched connectivity in the UK.”
Air India, being a Star Alliance member, has codeshare agreements with various other Star Alliance airlines offering a range of facilities across a wider Star Alliance network of 1,330 destinations in 192 countries.
