Japan Airlines (JAL) and British Airways (BA), both members of leading quality airline alliance oneworld®, have reached an agreement to expand their codeshare partnership. Beginning March 28, 2010, JAL will codeshare with BA on nine new routes and from April 28, 2010, 4 new routes, all in the European region. Including current codeshare flights within the United Kingdom and within Europe, the total number of codeshare flights between the two airlines will be 23, broadening JAL’s Europe network to cover 36 cities with 54 routes.

JAL and BA first started to codeshare in February, 2004. At present, “JL” indicators are placed on BA-operated flights plying ten routes from London (Heathrow) to such destinations as Manchester and Vienna among others. Of the latest 13 routes, Brussels - the capital of Belgium, and Geneva in Switzerland are cities well-known to Japanese travelers and that will be brand new additions to JAL’s network while Athens gets placed back on the map after a 20 year absence since the airline suspended operations there in 1990.

With this expansion, JAL can now provide more convenience to customers traveling to popular tourist destinations like Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, to business cities in Germany like Berlin and Munich, as well as several other cities in Northern Europe.

oneworld partners Japan Airlines and British Airways are in discussions to further augment their bilateral partnership beyond codeshare arrangements, details of which will be announced as soon as developments are finalized. Customers of the alliance-partners can be certain to look forward to exciting new products offered in the near future.

Reservations and ticket sales begin on the respective commencement dates of the new codeshare flights.