This week, Virgin Atlantic celebrates 25 years of flying to India. In Virgin fashion, it’s doing so in style, with a joint announcement among partners Delta Airlines, Air France-KLM, and a new strategic partner IndiGo.
On the sidelines of the IATA Annual General Meeting, basically the UN General Assembly of airlines, the new strategic partnership for India was announced with very interesting nods to the future.
IndiGo carries more passengers in India than anyone else and will connect US and UK/European customers flying Virgin, Delta and Air France KLM onward in India, while also helping fill seats for these European and North American partners, as their own customers head West.
That’s probably a good thing, because with recent service additions, Virgin now flies a million seats a year to India and it sounds like others are piling on more flights too. It’s now one of the largest operators to India.
India Is The Future
I’ve been bullish on India as the next great center of the world for a while now. It’s not necessarily that I’m at all intelligent, it’s just based on the fact that India is the world’s largest population. But, when Ed Bastian, Delta’s formidable CEO says it, people tend to listen. Bastian mentioned India being the most important aviation market globally now and signaled a return of direct services for the carrier as well.
Virgin has been a small step ahead, adding service regularly on their Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore routes. IndiGo chose this alliance over formidable competition and this will certainly be a space to watch as more global airlines and alliances focus on India.
Geo-political activity points to India becoming a new manufacturing super power, in addition to its prolific work in tech, IT and customer service, not to mention blossoming tourism. These kind of globally connected businesses are big business, huge in fact, for corporate contracts and easy onward connectivity to regional sites is essential. The partnership makes sense.
In a somewhat rare and impressive signal of unity and seriousness towards India, Virgin Atlantic made their India crews part of the core Virgin family, rather than as contractors through a third party local company, known in aviation world as a GSA. This means Virgin’s India crews are a part of the full team, with benefits too.
When asked about loyalty implications of the new alliance, Virgin Atlantic CEO, Shai Weiss, noted a mutual passion for using loyalty to enhance guest experience far beyond just the earn and burn of points and miles. For future iterations, they’ve offered the following…
The MoU (memorandum of understanding) also creates a framework for deeper collaboration between the carriers on a bilateral and multilateral basis; contemplates commercial collaboration including network, loyalty, cargo and sales, subject to regulatory approvals; explores areas of non-commercial cooperation including aircraft maintenance, sustainability, training, ground handling; and acknowledges the need to develop advanced collaboration through use of technology to efficiently service joint customers.
IndiGo will provide onward connectivity for Virgin and the other strategic partners to 32 destinations, making it easier than ever to see Udaipur, Jaipur, Mumbai, Kashmir and delights further south in Bangalore and Goa.
India Is Also A Personal Favorite
I just returned from the lovely Leela Palace in Delhi, as I watched the news happen live.
To me, India is a country of joy. Even people with truly nothing seem to find positivity and it’s generally a way of life here. Hospitality is as warm and steeped in tradition as it comes, too. It’s hot, it’s humid, but it’s an experience unlike any other and that’s something that’s harder to say these days than I’d like.
The food, ugh. I adore. Sure, I’ll take a dosa from the South over a heavy curry from the North most days, but I love both and if you don’t love a good black daahl there’s something wrong with you.
In short, it’s already fairly easy to get to India but it’s about to get a whole lot easier and not just to hub cities too. More seats means more chances to use points, by the way!
Given the dire state of the BA offer with still flaky IT, dirty badly maintained cabins and dysfunctional (if at all) customer services a great option for those in the UK.