Low-cost airline group Jetstar has signed an interline and marketing agreement with Air France-KLM.
Under the deal, which took effect yesterday, Air France and KLM can market and sell Jetstar flights to their customers. Passengers will be able to book Jetstar flights as part of their journeys on the Air France-KLM website.
The agreement will cover all 60 destinations served by the Jetstar group. Besides its operations in Australia and New Zealand, it also has Jetstar Asia in Singapore and Jetstar Pacific in Vietnam.
Jetstar has existing interline agreements with 12 other airlines. But the deal with Air France-KLM is the first, besides the one with Qantas, that covers all Jetstar destinations, says Jetstar Asia's CEO Chong Phit Lian.
"A lot of possibilities will open up with this agreement... our network will add many benefits to both parties, since Singapore is a transit point for many European travellers," she adds.
Air France-KLM's senior VP for Asia Pacific Marnix Fruitema says the agreement "shows our commitment to participate in the growth of this part of the world".
"There has been very, very strong recovery from the Asian markets [after the economic downturn], and we are very optimistic about the year to come," he adds.
While Jetstar flights will be available for booking from Air France-KLM, Jetstar will not sell the European airline's flights for now.
"Most of our customers now are short-haul passengers," says Chong, adding that it is more logical for Air France-KLM's long-haul traffic to feed into Jetstar's predominantly short-haul network.
However, Jetstar is not ruling out selling Air France-KLM's flights in the future, as well as inking new interline agreements with other airlines.
"We will continue to look at other partners," says Chong. "Moving forward, it will be easier since we already have a template to work with from this partnership,"
Jetstar Asia recently announced that it will launch long-haul flights from Singapore by end-2010 with two Airbus A330s that it will receive from December.
The airline is expected to announce its first long-haul destination in the coming weeks. It has said it is considering destinations in Japan, China, Korea and Europe, and has already secured rights for Tokyo Narita.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
