Singapore Airlines pushes more US codeshare deals

Singapore Airlines (SIA) will further expand its codeshare portfolio to US destinations with an expansion of its agreement with South Korea-based Asiana Airlines.

The new codeshares will see Asiana flying to Honolulu, Seattle and Los Angeles with an SQ code, and linking to SIA’s Incheon flights. The flights will add to existing Asiana codeshares on flights between Singapore and Seoul, Jakarta, Perth, Auckland and Cape Town.

The deal comes after the recent application to the US Department of Transportation to add a bilateral agreement with a new partner—US-based JetBlue Airways—to the SIA codeshare catalog. It builds on other recent agreements with Turkish Airlines and Air New Zealand to share capacity and extend the carrier’s international connectivity deeper into traditional destination markets. New JetBlue-operated destinations originating from the airline’s Singapore Changi base will include 16 destinations including Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Tampa and Washington DC.

The JetBlue agreement would see what Singapore Airlines calls “seamless connections between the two airlines” across the North American region, pending regulatory approval. The new JetBlue codeshares will operate from SIA’s connections at New York JFK, and Asiana through Seoul’s Incheon International.

The deal with JetBlue signals SIA’s continued efforts to expand coverage without exposing its fleet to additional and expensive long-haul commitments in the face of increased competition from Middle East carriers.

“This [agreement] shows how we can achieve more by cooperating with the right partners,” SIA EVP-commercial Mak Swee Wah said of the JetBlue deal.

Singapore Airlines pushes more US codeshare deals