Another exciting opportunity for TAM do demonstrate its code-sharing incompetence by making travel for Air Canada passengers extremely difficult.

I have just completed a code-sharing nightmare with a TAM-purchased codeshare United Airlines flight from Sao Paulo to Washington. Not only did I miss the original flight because TAM's Brazil flight from Salvador was late, as usual, but it took me three hours to obtain a boarding pass to get the next day's United flight. I purchased the tickets from TAM, but TAM's computers would not communicate with United's. TAM kept telling me it was United's fault, United kept telling me it was TAM's fault. TAM, as the ticket seller, would give me no help. They just kept telling me to talk to United. Finally it was a diligent United employee who managed to get me on the flight. Oddly, I could see my "confirmed" reservations and seat numbers on both TAM's and United's online services, but that didn't seem to impress anyone at TAM customer service.

All Brazilian airlines offer horrific customer service. So I shouldn't be surprised. But one would think that at least when selling tickets under the TAM name that the company would take some responsibility for servicing its customers.

My wife, who went through this process with me, encountered exactly the same problem on the way back to Brazil, again with refusal by TAM to help in any way. Her ticket was sold by TAM (as was mine), the charge showed up as TAM on the credit card, and TAM was unwilling to issued boarding passes or help with the second computer snafu. I have yet to return to Brazil, but I expect another fiasco when I do later this month.

I travel to Canada frequently from Brazil on Air Canada, and am not looking forward to the complications and service degradation this expansion of code-sharing with TAM will create.