Originally Posted by
emcampbe
Well, for one thing, they can say they offer service to destinations that they don't fly their equipment to. As a prime example, Air Canada doesn't send their own equipment here to CVG. But they do fly here. I can book AC 5XXX CVG-ORD, and then onward on AC equipment to YYZ.
But booking UAxxxx + ACxxx, if it was cheaper, would be the way you would go, right? I still fail to see how it is to *your* advantage, or even to AC's advantage, to have an AC flight number on your CVG-ORD segment.
Also, often codesharing is coupled with cost and revenue sharing. So, a flight from XXX-YYY might have costs shared equally by AC and Airline YY, while AC keeps the revenue from bookings it secures, while Airline YY keeps the revenue from the bookings it gets, even though its the same aircraft.
Can't this be done behind the scenes, and not dumped out onto the public? I mean, even AC realizes that, in Canada, they were creating a big problem by having both the "Jazz" and the "Air Canada" brand displayed in airports --so they arranged for the title, "Air Canada" to be used on all Jazz flights, in public displays.
Even AC realizes that inconsistent branding and inconsistent service is a major problem, and they've been making, much to their credit, huge (and very successful) strides to correct this.
So, instead of having to have customers connect on another carrier, AC or Airline Y it is codesharing with can both make money serving a destination they never could on their own.
And airlines didn't cooperate in a manner transparent to customers
before codesharing?? AC (CP) had no problem booking people onto AI flights back in the 80s, and selling tickets such as YVR-YYZ-YUL-LHR-BOM, acting as an AI agent on the YYZ-YUL-LHR-BOM segments.
It also says on the ticket who's operating the flight (although, i agree, depending on who issued the ticket, this can be more challenging). But it keeps us on our toes, to look who is operating the flight.
I know we take a
lot of things for granted these days (ie: nobody calls to 'confirm' flights anymore, like used to be required), but consumers shouldn't have to dissect a bunch of marketing gimmickry, just to figure out whether they're allowed one bag (ie: United), or 2 (AC). Or what website to look at to get a preview of the Buy-on-Board. And when AC puts its code onto, say, UA flights, it seriously dilutes the brand, especially when they read about all the great new AC IFE and on-board service, but get stuck with the typical UA filth.