A few days ago, I’d written about how Jet Airways’ was getting closer and closer to the Skyteam chums at KLM/Air France and Delta Airways, with new partnerships across the board, and maybe a JV in sight. It turns out, there will be more to it than we already knew. Essentially, with the support of all the partners, Jet Airways’ is now being able to offer more connectivity across major European hubs at Amsterdam, Paris as well as London now.

As per Jet Airways, as of November 2, customers of Jet Airways will be able to connect with Delta flights to 9 US destinations at London Heathrow. These destinations will include Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle. Similarly, Delta / Virgin Atlantic customers will be able to connect with Jet Airways flights to Delhi and Mumbai at Heathrow, and onwards to 20 destinations in India.

Virgin Atlantic, on the other hand, will also start to do a codeshare with Jet Airways as of 2017. They will connect 10 destinations in the USA to the Jet Airways network. Virgin Atlantic used to operate to Mumbai and Delhi, but has withdrawn from Mumbai in 2014 after a brief stint and only operates flights to Delhi now.

JetPrivilege will further get into a tie-up to bring Delta accrual and redemptions back, however the date is not known at the moment. Also, Delta Skymiles will mutually reciprocate.

Bottomline

This is great news for the Indian-North American market. It seems Delta always wanted to be in this market but criticized Etihad, amongst other ME3 airlines for taking away their market. And now, they seem to be adding to the Etihad pockets by partnering with Jet Airways where 24% is owned by Etihad Airways. The world has its strange ways, right?

What do you guys think about this partnership? Does this help you?

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