Jet Airways and Air France-KLM had signed an enhanced cooperation agreement (metal neutrality) last year. The contour of this agreement allowed the three airlines to operate flights in cooperation with each other, rather than contesting each other for the same revenue. This means, they were all free to sell each other’s flights and would divide up the P&L from the flights equally.

As a first step, the airlines put connections using each other’s flights. So, for instance, you could fly from anywhere to Delhi on Jet Airways and then connect to the KLM flight to Amsterdam, and take another connection to a KLM destination in Europe or onwards to the USA.

Now, the obvious next step, while Jet Airways is still not a member of SkyTeam, is for KLM/Air France to honour the elite members of Jet Airways frequent flyer program JetPrivilege, and Jet Airways give benefits to Air France/ KLM frequent fliers.

To this effect, the President & CEO of KLM, Pieter Elbers mentioned last week at the IATA India Aviation Summit, about the fact that they are working towards aligning their frequent flyer programs with those of Jet Airways.  There was not a lot of what he spoke about this but did indicate that this could mean a wide-ranging arrangement about how the airlines are going to work to make the members of each of their programs happy.

To me, this indicates that things are moving in the right direction because this is the first they’ve talked about it after the JV was established about 8 months ago.  This should also mean that sooner than later, we should expect to get better treatment even when travelling in Economy Class on KLM or Air France, as a Jet Airways Platinum member. And that should mean, an even more valuable JetPrivilege program. While we are at it, can we also have tier points for KL/AF tagged flights, please?

What do you think will be the timeline of this alliance coming together? I’m keen to hear your thoughts.