EXPANDED CODESHARE AGREEMENTS GIVE AIR SEYCHELLES ADDED CLOUT IN ITALY
(Posted 17th December 2015)
Italy’s leading airline and Etihad partner carrier Alitalia and Air Seychelles have enhanced their codeshare agreement to provide Italian travelers with unprecedented access to the Seychelles.
Beginning December 19th will Alitalia place its ‘AZ’ flight code on three weekly flights operated by Air Seychelles between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Mahe, the Seychelles’ international airport.
Alitalia already operates codeshare flights on the daily Air Seychelles service between Abu Dhabi and Mahe as well as on several flights per day between Mahé and Praslin, the two largest islands in the archipelago.
Air Seychelles has in turn placed its ‘HM’ flight code on Alitalia’s daily domestic services between Rome and Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan Malpensa, Palermo and Turin, and on the Alitalia operated international daily services from Abu Dhabi to Milan and Venice, in addition to exiting code shared flights on the Abu Dhabi to Rome route.
John Shepley, Chief Strategy and Planning Officer at Alitalia, said when making the announcement: ‘We are excited to strengthen our codeshare agreement with Air Seychelles to provide travellers from Italy with more choice and convenience when flying to the beautiful Seychelles islands. The enhancement of the agreement with Air Seychelles will considerably strengthen the Alitalia presence on the Indian Ocean area and, at the same time, will make Italy more accessible to Air Seychelles’ passengers, who can now take advantage of easy connections beyond Rome to further new six iconic Italian cities. Thanks to the expanded code share agreement, Alitalia will witness new traffic flows to the Seychelles, making these islands even easier to reach by Italian travellers as well as a further increasingly popular destination to the Italian market’.
Roy Kinnear, Chief Executive Officer of Air Seychelles in turn responded: ‘We are delighted to expand our codeshare agreement with Alitalia to offer our guests convenient new travel options between eight major cities in Italy and Seychelles. Through this development our network reach has widened to cover some of Italy’s most important centres of art, history and architecture, such as Palermo, the famous capital of Sicily. Italy is the third largest source market for Seychelles. More than 18,000 travellers from Italy have visited our shores so far this year and with more choice and connectivity, we are confident that this number will continue to grow, allowing more people to explore our beautiful islands and stimulating the tourism sector of Seychelles. Since it was first signed just over one year ago, our codeshare agreement with Alitalia has produced great results, showing that holidaymakers and business travellers in Italy and beyond find our combined flights a very attractive travelling proposition’.
Only a few days ago has Air Seychelles, a Skytrax four star airline, welcomed their half millionth passenger on board this year while on the same day also welcoming the 180.000th passenger on their domestic flights which are operated with DHC Twin Otter equipment. Commented a source close to the airline at the time that this success was only possible through a range of measures, including the resumed nonstop flights to Paris and a large number of code share agreements which has been feeding passenger numbers by the thousands on to Air Seychelles flights.
The new codeshare flights are available for sale through both airlines’ reservation systems with immediate effect.
