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.

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