Virgin and Air Canada enter into new codeshare

Virgin Australia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enter into a strategic cooperation agreement with Air Canada, with the first stage to be implemented in early 2017.

The codeshare will offer Virgin Australia customers to book travel on Air Canada’s flights from Los Angeles to Toronto (YYZ), Vancouver (YVR), Calgary (YYC) and Montreal (YUL).

Virgin Australia guests will earn Velocity Points on these services, as both airlines plan to offer reciprocal frequent flyer redemption benefits on each other’s flights in a subsequent stage of the agreement, with further details to be released in 2017.

Travellers arriving on Air Canada’s daily services from Vancouver to Brisbane and Sydney will be able to travel on connecting Virgin Australia flights to Adelaide, Canberra, Cairns, Melbourne, Perth, Christchurch and Auckland. They can also travel on Virgin Australia services from Sydney to Brisbane, Sydney to the Gold Coast and Brisbane to Wellington. Members of Air Canada’s loyalty program Aeroplan will earn Aeroplan Miles when travelling on these codeshare services.

As part of the new venture, Virgin Australia plans to place its code on Air Canada’s direct flights between Australia (Brisbane and Sydney) and Vancouver in a subsequent stage of the agreement.

John Thomas, Group Executive Virgin Australia Airlines, said “We are enhancing our services from Australia to Los Angeles by offering our customers convenient codeshare connections to four major Canadian cities”.

“Canada is also an important inbound tourism market for Australia, with visitors spending AU800 million in 2015 and visitor arrivals increasing by 3%.”