Originally Posted by ashill

I think one of the major questions is what kind of codeshare agreement. For example, it used to be (before AA entered the market) that you could get AA*/AS flights on routes like LAX-SEA for competitive fares; the AA code would occasionally even be cheaper than the AS code on the AS metal flight. Now AA I believe won't sell you an AA*/AS at all without an AA-operated segment, and even on flights serving markets that neither carrier serves alone (eg EAT/YLW-SEA-CLT, or EAT/YLW-SEA-ORD-MSN, for two that I've priced out a lot recently and found it basically can't be done), codeshare flights are exorbitantly expensive. So AS simply being in oneworld doesn't tell us everything. The question is will they actually want customers to use each other's flights when it makes sense and thus price codeshares competitively, or will they continue to make it quite difficult to actually benefit from their cooperation? This kind of marketing that is a bit independent of simply meeting the minimum they're required to because both airlines are in oneworld makes me cautiously optimistic.

And of course the SEA-BLR flight goes well beyond normal alliance partner codesharing; that's route planning that is almost entirely dependent on having a partner with a SEA hub.