Air France-KLM, Indigo eye bigger market with codeshare

“We are working on how we can do some expansion for IndiGo’s international route in the subcontinent. It’s a work in progress… anyway the demand is high, so it’s needed,” said Claude Sarre, general manager for the Indian subcontinent.

In 2022, Air France-KLM and IndiGo announced that they had implemented a codeshare agreement allowing each airline to sell seats on the other’s flights. This allowed Air France and KLM to give their passengers access to 30 new Indian cities, and IndiGo got the right to sell seats on European airline group flights on more than 300 routes.

Codeshare flights allow one airline to market flights operated by another. The arrangement enables passengers to reach a wide range of destinations. When booking a ticket, it will be issued under the flight number of the carrier chosen, even if the actual operation is by a different airline.

“This code sharing is very important to make the customer more interested and less intimidated, very important to develop the domestic market,” Sarre said.

If the current plan to expand the codeshare comes to fruition, a passenger flying from Amsterdam or Paris to Chennai or Bengaluru will be able to travel further on an IndiGo flight to another country in the sub-continent, such as Colombo in Sri Lanka. Will happen.

Simultaneously, the European airline group is collaborating with IndiGo to align its back-end and information technology operations to make existing codeshares work smoothly and create attractive international connections with minimal transit times.

Interestingly, the codeshare partnership between Air France-KLM was signed with IndiGo when Peter Albers was the chairman of KLM. Albers had joined IndiGo as chief executive in September 2022 and since then has been seen as a key strategist in driving IndiGo’s expansion plans in Europe.

For now, Air France-KLM is focused on strengthening its partnership with IndiGo, and has no plans to expand ties with other airlines. Air France-KLM already has an interline arrangement with Vistara.

“We want to consolidate what we were doing with Indigo earlier because there has been a lot of IT development. We have an interline with Air India, Vistara, but we don’t earn miles,” Sarre said.

Air France, with a hub in Paris, and KLM, with its hub in Amsterdam, are hopeful of smoother operations and fewer queues at their airports for passengers flying through these airports during the coming summer travel season.

The outlook for India remains encouraging.

“The demand in India is huge since Covid. GDP is an important figure to show demand in the coming months and years to come. We know we need to adapt to send more aircraft to India,” Sarre said.

“Both KLM and Air France definitely define India as a focus market. The past has shown this, and the future will show it,” said Christiaan van de Koppel, Commercial Director, Indian Subcontinent.

The airline is also looking at the growth of Air India as it recently placed an order for 470 aircraft, including 70 wide-body aircraft and 400 narrow-body aircraft.

“It’s going to be more interesting to see what they do with the (400) medium-haul aircraft,” Koppel said.

This is not the first time that Air France-KLM is exploring the possibility of a comprehensive partnership with an Indian airline. In 2017, the group agreed to a joint venture with erstwhile full-service carrier Jet Airways.