SriLankan Airlines has marked the first anniversary of its entry into oneworld by entering into a landmark code-sharing agreement with American Airlines, a founder member of the global airline alliance.

The flag carrier of Sri Lanka became part of oneworld on 1 May 2014 as the first airline from the Indian sub-continent to join any of the global airline alliances, and has since then been offering the full range of the world’s most highly rated aviation groupings’ services and benefits.

Its code-sharing agreement with American Airlines, the world’s biggest airline, is the fifth signed with its partners in oneworld since its addition to the alliance, with similar arrangements set in place in the past year with Finnair, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and Russia’s S7 Airlines, alongside an established accord with Malaysia Airlines.

Under the initial phase of their agreement, SriLankan’s UL designator will be placed on services operated by American Airlines on six transatlantic routes, connecting the US carrier’s Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago O’Hare and New York JFK hubs with the European gateways of Frankfurt and Paris CDG, where they will provide seamless transfers with SriLankan’s own connections to and from its Colombo hub.

Later, the plan is to add American’s own AA code to select flights operated by SriLankan, smoothing travel to its home country and across its extensive South Asian network for American’s customers.

With both airlines members of oneworld, members of American’s AAdvantage and SriLankan’s FlySmiLes loyalty programmes already receive the full range of oneworld services and benefits across both airlines’ networks, including the ability to earn and redeem mileage rewards and, for top tier cardholders, to access lounges and enjoy additional baggage allowances and priority baggage delivery.

Including all its other oneworld partners – airberlin, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, LAN Airlines, TAM Airlines and Qatar Airways – its membership of the alliance means SriLankan can offer customers the smoothest of travel to more than 1,000 destinations in 155 countries, flying all the way on a collection of the world’s leading airlines.