Air connections between South Africa and India are set to improve, following the signing of a new codeshare agreement between SAA and Jet Airways. The agreement will also see more affordable fare combinations in the market.

The new codeshare agreement supports the SAA’s trunk route between Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi, and the connections from Abu Dhabi on to five major points in India. SAA now shares Jet Airways’ services from Abu Dhabi to Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. In turn, Jet Airways has put its code on SAA’s flights between Abu Dhabi and Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Both airlines already have codeshare agreements with Etihad Airways in place on routes to and from the Abu Dhabi hub.

“With this new partnership, SAA will be able to offer additional daily connections to India all via Abu Dhabi on top of the Etihad-operated flights on which our code is already applied,” says Sylvain Bosc, SAA Chief Commercial Officer. “This is going to multiply the connection opportunities available to travellers between both countries and therefore enable more access to more combinations of affordable fares.”

Bosc admits that SAA’s first weeks of operations via Abu Dhabi were made difficult by the closure of the Yemeni airspace due to ongoing military operations, which made the flight time between Johannesburg and the Middle East longer and therefore led to many onward connections being missed, in particular to India. “This constraint, which is obviously beyond our control, has now been lifted,” he says.