LONDON: The Indian airline Jet Airways has signed a codeshare agreement with Saudi Arabia’s budget airline flynas, which will improve the connectivity between major Indian and Saudi Arabian cities.
Under the agreement, travelers will be able to use either airline for their trips between the two countries and on some domestic connections.
Flights are on sale now with customers able to travel on codeshare flights from Tuesday.
“This partnership is an important step in-line with flynas’ expansion and development strategy. Through such agreements we aim to offer a continually improved service to our passengers by adding more travel routes and expanding our reach regionally and internationally, in particular to key markets such as India,” said flynas’ CEO, Bander Al-Mohanna.
Jet Airways will place its marketing code “9W” on flynas flights between Dammam and Jeddah and Riyadh. The code will also be placed on connections from those cities to the holy city of Madinah as well as Gizan, Gassim, Taif and Abha. This will enable Jet Airways customers to fly into one Saudi city and leave via another.
Flynas will place its marketing code XY on Jet Airways’ international flights connecting Jeddah to Mumbai, Riyadh to Mumbai and Delhi. It will also cover flights from Dammam to Mumbai and Delhi.
Flynas will place its code on some destinations within Jet Airways domestic network, via Mumbai to Delhi, Kochi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Lucknow as well as via Delhi to Bengaluru, Lucknow, Chennai and Kochi.
The codeshare agreement will support close to 6 million passengers who travel between Saudi Arabia and India for religious tourism and business purposes, said Marnix Fruitema, executive vice president — commercial, Jet Airways.
“Saudi Arabia is the second largest international travel market to and from India,” he said in a statement.
