WASHINGTON, October 17 (RIA Novosti) – Russian airline Transaero and US carrier JetBlue Airlines have signed a deal that should help travelers more easily access out-of-the-way destinations in both countries by the end of the month, USA Today reported Thursday.
“This is our newest and largest partner in the United States,” Transaero chief executive Olga Pleshakova told the newspaper about Transaero’s new partnership with New York-based JetBlue.
The arrangement should be “very effective and – we hope – very fruitful for us,” Pleshakova added.
The agreement, known as an “interline” deal, means passengers using two different airlines to travel from one location to another can arrange the trip through a single carrier rather than booking each portion of the journey separately.
It also means luggage on such trips will be automatically transferred from one airline to the other, eliminating the need for passengers to handle the luggage transfers themselves.
The deal allows airlines “to sell space on each other’s aircraft and provide connecting service for both passengers and baggage,” Perry Flint, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
“The most obvious benefits are that you do not need to purchase separate individual tickets for each leg of the journey,” he added.
JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Pleshkova told USA Today that the deal would provide travelers from New York to Moscow with seamless connections to “the entire Transaero network worldwide,” which includes destinations throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union.
The deal will also streamline Transaero passengers’ connections to JetBlue destinations across the United States, including Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Orlando, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Hollywood.
The JetBlue partnership is the latest of several similar arrangements between Transaero and other Western airlines servicing destinations in North and Central America.
The Russian carrier signed interline deals earlier this year with San Francisco-based Virgin America and the airline WestJet, which is based in Calgary, Canada.
