Vueling and British Airways to sell combined tickets

Using the BA or Vueling websites, passengers can purchase tickets from one or the other and combine return flights – for example, a ticket with Vueling to a London airport and a long-haul flight from Heathrow to another continent can be bought as one trip, with luggage checked in at the Vueling desk in Spain and collected at the final destination.

At present, this allows customers to book flights from London Gatwick to Barcelona, Rome and Naples as one trip with a connecting flight, via the same website.

The move will shortly include flights from Gatwick to Alicante, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, Ibiza, Sevilla, Málaga and in Italy, Bari, Pisa, Torino, Venice, Verona, Cagliari, Catania (Sardinia), Pisa and Genova.

A third phase will include combined tickets on Vueling flights to London and all BA destinations from Heathrow in one purchase on the same website.

This means Vueling flights between London and Barcelona will increase from four to 15 a day.

Vueling, based in Catalunya and founded in 2007, is the first European low-cost airline to combine ticket sales with other carriers.

For British Airways – owned by IAG, which also covers Iberia – the UK-based airline's flight codes will now apply to over 170 Vueling trips linking 61 routes, of which 31 are international with the departure and return airport being in Spain.

Of these destinations, at the moment 18 are in Italy, seven in the UK and six in Scandinavia, as well as 11 Italian domestic flights from Rome and Florence-Pisa.

Vueling will also share flight codes with Iberia and will soon do so with Qatar Airways and American Airlines, increasing the number of long-haul flights leaving Barcelona's El Prat airport and extending to most other terminals in Spain via connecting flights to Barcelona.