SriLankan Airlines is making the most of its recently launched routes to Melbourne and Hong Kong by expanding its codeshare agreement with Qantas, resulting in additional domestic connectivity across Australasia for its own travellers and more regional connections in Asia-Pacific for Qantas passengers.
Under the enhanced agreement, Qantas’s flights between Melbourne and Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland will now carry SriLankan’s UL code, while SriLankan’s flights between Colombo and Bangkok and Hong Kong will carry Qantas’s QF code.
Miles earning and redemption will be available on all of the above routes to members of both FlySmiles and Qantas Club, as will other benefits such as lounge access, priority check-in and boarding.
SriLankan’s inaugural flights from Colombo to Melbourne – the first non-stop connection between the two cities – took off just last month, and the expansion of the codeshare also brings New Zealand to the airline’s network for the first time in its history.
“The expansion of our partnership with Qantas, along with the launch of our non-stop Colombo-Melbourne flights, provides our passengers with seamless connectivity from Australia’s largest cities to Colombo and of course vice versa, ” said SriLankan’s CEO, Suren Ratwatte.
SriLankan’s flights to Hong Kong are also a recent addition, having launched earlier this year as a non-stop service. The carrier previously operated flights to the city by going through Bangkok.
With the codeshare, Qantas travellers going between Colombo and destinations in Australia will be able to go via Hong Kong on Qantas’s flights from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, or via Bangkok on its flights from Sydney and Melbourne.
The airlines already codeshare on Qantas’s flights from Singapore to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane, along with SriLankan’s flights between Colombo and Singapore.
The expansion to the two Oneworld alliance members’ codeshare agreement, which began in 2014, is set to kick in on December 18 this year, though bookings on the new codeshare routes can already be made.
