US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - United Advertising for US Airways?

ok, so there haven't been many US Airways full page ads lately with droolworthy destinations, so I've taken to reading the competition's advertisements.

in today's Boston Globe, United took out a full page ad with destinations including San Juan, Mexico, and Florida. the prices weren't extraordinary, but they were competitive. however, the small print advised that some these destinations would be code share flights operated by US Airways.

since US Airways keeps all of the revenue for these flights (from what I could tell, there were no United metal legs), why would United advertise them? no doubt there is some intangible marketing reason?

Umm, UA flies to San Juan, Florida and Mexico too. ;-)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ATC:
Since US Airways keeps all of the revenue for these flights (from what I could tell, there were no United metal legs), why would United advertise them? no doubt there is some intangible marketing reason?</font>

I don't think US keeps all the revenue. Doesn't UA buy a block of seats from US, and then keep the revenue from the tickets they sell?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by nerd:
I don't think US keeps all the revenue. Doesn't UA buy a block of seats from US, and then keep the revenue from the tickets they sell?</font>

The terms of the US/UA codeshare specify that the party who flies the plane gets the revenue. There might be a travel agency size commission for the transaction but other than that the revenue goes to the operator.

UA would advertise and sell such a flight because they expect to provide the feed -- a customer coming from, oh say, Boise would fly UA metal to a UA hub, one or the other from a UA hub to a US hub and then US to the final destination. Both airlines get traffic that otherwise would have gone elsewhere so they both win.

the thing that struck me odd was that there were no UA feeds involved in these destinations, at least from Boston. my only theory is that the advertisement was a standard boilerplate that was used nationally, and they didn't bother to yank origin/destination pairs in individual markets where United would derive no revenue.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by TomBascom:
UA would advertise and sell such a flight because they expect to provide the feed -- a customer coming from, oh say, Boise would fly UA metal to a UA hub, one or the other from a UA hub to a US hub and then US to the final destination. Both airlines get traffic that otherwise would have gone elsewhere so they both win.</font>

or maybe, it's just fighting for marketshare against American for everthing