Delta, Virgin Atlantic and Jet Airways have announced a new codeshare agreement covering services between North America and India via London Heathrow.

From November 2 Jet Airways customers travelling between India and North America will be able to connect at Heathrow onto nine US destinations operated by Delta, namely Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

At the same time Delta customers will be able to connect onto Jet Airways services to Mumbai and Delhi via Heathrow, and onto 20 Indian destinations including Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Calicut, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Pune, Trivandrum and Vadodara.

The new agreement adds to the existing Delta and Jet Airways codeshares via Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris CDG.

Then in 2017 (subject to government approvals) Delta’s transatlantic joint venture partner Virgin will expand its existing codeshare agreement with Jet Airways, with the Indian carrier placing its code on Virgin flights from Heathrow to ten North American cities including Miami, Newark, San Francisco and Washington.

Virgin already codeshares on Jet Airways routes to five Indian cities from Heathrow via Delhi.

Codeshare services will be available at delta.com, virgin-atlantic.com and jetairways.com, and Delta and Jet Airways frequent flyer programme members will “soon be able to enjoy network-wide, reciprocal mileage earning and redemption privileges”.

The new agreements follow the recent announcement that Skyteam members Air France, KLM and Delta plan to form a joint venture covering multiple routes to and from their hubs at Amsterdam and Paris CDG in Europe along with Atlanta, Minneapolis and New York JFK in the USA.