Bits: HfP Summer Party tickets on sale tomorrow, Virgin expands its IndiGo partnership

News in brief:

HfP Summer Party tickets go on sale tomorrow

It’s finally time to distribute tickets to the Head for Points Summer Party!

The date is Thursday 19th June.

Our summer party is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer event. Because it is getting increasingly hard to schedule them around major football tournaments, we are moving to a two year schedule. If you miss this one, your next chance will be 2027!

This year we are moving to a new venue – Christ Church Spitalfields, the prominent church and event venue on the Eastern side of Spitalfields Market (photo below).

The party will take place from 6pm until (roughly) 9pm. There will be 500 tickets available. The price is £15 each, including VAT, and includes your first drink. A cash bar is also available.

One attendee will win the most impressive raffle prize that we have ever given away. If you can remember some of the prizes from previous parties, you’ll know that this is saying something.

We’ll also have a number of other great prizes to give away, generously donated by the companies you read about on HfP each day.

Full details of our amazing star raffle prize, the time that tickets will go on sale and the purchase link will be in our lead article tomorrow. You really don’t want to miss it.

Virgin Atlantic to expand its IndiGo partnership

IndiGo, Delta Air Lines, Air France KLM and Virgin Atlantic have announced plans to expand co-operation on routes between India and Europe / North America.

The deal comes as IndiGo gears up to launch flights to Europe for the first time. It will initially use six leased Norse Atlantic aircraft as a stop-gap until the Airbus aircraft it has ordered are in service.

IngiGo has existing partnerships with Air France KLM and Virgin Atlantic. These will be expanded into full codeshares and will include connections to Delta Air Lines flights from IndiGo destinations in Europe. In total it will cover:

• KLM flights from Amsterdam to 30 points within Europe
• Delta and KLM flights from Amsterdam to the United States and Canada
• Virgin Atlantic flights from Manchester to the United States

This is only part of the deal, however.

The press release says that:

The MoU also creates a framework for deeper collaboration between the carriers on a bilateral and multilateral basis; contemplates commercial collaboration including network, loyalty, cargo and sales, subject to regulatory approvals; explores areas of non-commercial cooperation including aircraft maintenance, sustainability, training, ground handling; and acknowledges the need to develop advanced collaboration through use of technology to efficiently service joint customers.

Social media posts intimated that the aim is a similar partnership to the transatlantic joint venture. This would mean, eventually, that all flights on Delta / Air France / KLM / Virgin Atlantic and IndiGo between the US / Europe and India would be operated by one legal entity which controls pricing.

I suspect that it will be a struggle to get this past India’s famously interventionist airline regulators, but everyone involved appears to be playing a long game.

Whilst it isn’t a dead cert that IndiGo will join SkyTeam – Virgin Atlantic was part of the transatlantic joint venture for many years whilst outside the alliance – it is the obvious conclusion. It would be virtually impossible for IndiGo to join oneworld once this deal is in place, and Air India is in Star Alliance.