Randy, I believe that codeshare problems are coming to a head. Up to recently, airlines actually practiced deceit as to which aircraft you travelled on! eg you would get a ticket with a well known US carrier to fly to Asia and suddenly find you are on Korean Air! You get attracted to a certain airline because of its adverts re "sleeper seats" or airport limo pickup or upgraded international economy class amenities and find ,at the airport you are in a codeshare partners seat with none of the expected amenities etc.
I just wonder if the "alliances" were partly developed to make codeshares more palatable to an ever more cynical flying public.
The concept of seamless travel seems to fall apart the further you fly from the US and western Europe. Examples of good alliance partners are UA, LH and AC.
However ,anybody travelling on "oneworld " lately may note a reluctance by BA to recognize elite travellers on QANTAS or AA tickets. Despite a US to Australia to Thailand AA codeshare ticket and elite status with both QF and AA, I felt that BA looked after its own pax before me.(Indeed I was bumped at SYD due to an aircraft configuration change . Over drinks awaiting the 8 hours for our new flight, 2 of the 3 other pax who I knew were also offloaded did not have a BA ticket)
With Star, I have had troubles with AN and Thai. Ansett , in particular, in my experience, pays little attention to Star Gold status.They don't even recognize the Star red baggage priority tags.I always have them replaced with AN's blue tags in SYD or MEL. I travelled earlier this year ORD- LAX -AKL-BNE-CAIRNS with a UA ticket but travelling on UA ( ORD to LAX only), NZ and AN aircraft.(BUT never again). Sure the fare was about 10% less than straight UA to SYD, but it wasn't worth the saving. My preselected seats in NZ's 747s had been "deleted" by checkin and ,of course, domestic seats can't be requested with AN. Despite having a Business Class fare, I really felt that I was lucky just to be in J class let alone to request anything extra.
When I fly UA( and I'm currently Premex) and despite its shortcomings, they do make you feel that a frequent flier is very important to them.
I won't even mention problems getting frequent flier points out of some codeshare flights. I'm sure you have had enough complaints especially regaerding the restrictive rules of AN and BA.
I hope that Congress starts looking at the relationship between the airline whose name is on the ticket and the airline actually flying the passenger. Surely, there must be more honesty and guaranteed minimum standards of service in relation to the metal we fly in.
Many of my coworkers have burnt in the "codeshare" game .
It is time for government intervention.