IndiGo and British Airways announced their codeshare partnership today. This will see British Airways place code on IndiGo flights to Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Goa, Trivandrum, Kolkata, Rajkot and Vadodara. Interestingly, the airline also serves five of these destinations via New Delhi with its existing codeshare arrangement with Vistara. Rajkot, Trivandrum and Vadodara are the new destinations which British Airways will add with this code share. The flights are available for October 12, 2023 and beyond.
It is rare, if not impossible, to codeshare with two partners in the same market. What makes this codeshare even more interesting is that, British Airways’s arch rival Virgin Atlantic also has a codeshare with IndiGo and the two recently celebrated the completion of one year of this codeshare. So we have a case here where British Airways codeshares with Vistara, Virgin Atlantic codeshares with IndiGo and now British Airways and IndiGo will codeshare with each other.
A partnership, be it interline or codeshare, always has scope to expand and this could pave the way for future expansion. There is significant traffic to the UK which originates in the western state of Gujarat and Vistara does not operate to either Rajkot or Vadodara.
Writing on the wall with Vistara’s merger?
The Vistara – British Airways codeshare came into effect in 2018, when Vistara did not have a widebody and London operations were still many months away. A lot has changed since then.
Vistara, the Tata – SIA joint venture, is set to merge with Air India next year. Air India has been the only Indian carrier on routes to London after the demise of Jet Airways and till Vistara started operations. With Vistara merging into Air India, the scope to expand codeshare or even continue look bleak for British Airways.
With India an important market and rights restricted along with slots at Heathrow to make the flights beyond Indian metros work, both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic need a partner at India end. That it is IndiGo for both the airlines, is not a mere coincidence.
IndiGo the preferred choice?
British Airways operates to Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad in India from London’s Heathrow airport. IndiGo may have ambitions of flying to London, but that isn’t happening just yet. With the Tata group of airlines consolidating and no other player in the country having the depth and breadth in network coverage as IndiGo, it has become the preferred carrier of choice.
The only challenge for passengers will be to transfer terminals as IndiGo operates from multiple terminals at both Mumbai and Delhi. There could thus be instances of having to catch the next flight at another terminal, necessitating longer transit times.
Win win for passengers ?
Passengers ticketed to London via Mumbai or New Delhi flying IndiGo flights on the domestic leg will be offered a complimentary meal and same baggage allowance as that of their British Airways ticket.
Over the years, LCCs have carved out market share at the expense of FSCs and from being point to point carriers, moved to a network model. In the process, they started both interlines and codeshares.
In cases where under codeshare or interline deals passengers transfer from a full-service carrier to an LLC, where buy on board is the norm, it is now standard practice to serve complimentary meals, a norm followed by IndiGo as well, as an added convenience.
Secondly, Indian rules warrant arriving passengers to complete immigration and customs at the point of entry. This means passengers having arrived in Delhi or Mumbai and flying onwards with IndiGo’s code shared flights will have to collect their bags and redeposit them. In that case, one might even look for other, cheaper options. Except that those are not subject to compensation or re-accommodation in case of delays on the inbound flight. The only question would be how passengers from premium cabins would react.
What is in it for IndiGo ?
Codeshare agreements are done in many ways and revolve around revenue sharing, fixed or as a percentage of ticket cost. Typically, the lower priced buckets are not available under codeshare and that makes it attractive for IndiGo.
Having higher priced seats sold in advance, allows any carrier to drop prices on other seats if it has to take on competition or push overall revenue upwards.
How will it reflect in total revenue for IndiGo, we will never know as like most carriers – the airline does not share or declare the split.
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