Air Canada, Virgin Australia begin codeshare flights

Air Canada and Virgin Australia are kicking off the first phase of a strategic cooperation agreement with the sale of codeshare flights in North America and Australia. Air Canada customers flying on the carrier’s daily non-stop flights from Vancouver to Brisbane and Melbourne are now able to book on connecting Virgin Australia flights to Adelaide, Canberra, Cairns, Melbourne, Perth, Christchurch and Auckland and earn Aeroplan miles. The codeshare also applies on Sydney-Brisbane, Sydney-Gold Coast and Brisbane-Wellington flights. Passengers travelling on Virgin Australia’s 18 return services per week between Australia and Los Angeles can now book connecting Air Canada codeshare flights to Calgary, Toronto and Montreal and receive Velocity frequent flyer points on services to the three cities. The codeshares apply to travel from June 1 and there are plans to extend the agreement, signed in 2016, to cover Vancouver at a later date. The airlines also plan to ultimately offer reciprocal frequent flyer redemption on each other’s flights. Air Canada flies a Boeing 777-200LR to Melbourne and a Boeing 787 to Brisbane and recently announced it would also operate direct flights to Melbourne on a seasonal basis from December 2017. “This codeshare agreement will make it easier for Australians to visit Canada and for Canadians to explore more of Australia and we are thrilled to be working with a world-class airline in Air Canada,’’ Virgin Australia Airlines group executive John Thomas said in a statement. “Canada is an important inbound tourism market for Australia, with visitors spending $A800 million in 2016 and visitor arrivals increasing by seven per cent on the previous year.” The codeshare agreement comes as Virgin low-cost unit Tigerair Australia announced it would start flying three times weekly services between Brisbane and Canberra from September 14. The LCC launched services from Melbourne to Australia’s capital in December last year and announced Friday it would add an additional weekly service on the route due to good consumer demand. The new service will lift the number of return flights between Melbourne and Canberra to eight per week from September 15, providing more than 200,000 seats a year.