Originally Posted by
jrl767
it’s a DL award … KL flight number, with a notation that it’s operated by German Airways
the “Seat Selection” link on the app says “Oh no! We’re sorry but seat map for this flight is not available. Contact German Airways GmbH …”
the fact that KL wouldn’t sell BKK-AMS-FRA on these flights should have been a clue (but along the same lines, I’m a bit surprised that the 13-hr overnight connection didn’t appear)
KLM will be able to check the bags through in this case. Here's what is causing confusion, there's two types of codeshares.
- Codeshare as known by most. Airline A sells a seat on flight of airline B. The flight is wholly operated by and for airline B. Ie DL9645 is really KL668. DL is simply selling you a seat on OAL flight. You checkin with KLM, your bag tag had the KL668 flight number on it, etc..
- Codeshares where airline B is operating on behalf of airline A. Ie DL3833 is operated on behalf of DL by Skywest. Skywest is not operating this flight for itself, there is no tickets sold by Skywest for this flight. It's why they can't also have OAL sell tickets on the flight. This is also called a wet lease agreement. Think back a year when BA was short on planes and had to ask QR/AY to fly for them, these weren't QR/AY flights despite the crew and plane being QR/AY. There was no QR/AY flight number.
Your flight is the 2nd type. While ZQ crew and plane will fly the route, it will be in essence a KLM flight. You will checkin with KLM, KLM will handle your bags, your bag tag will have a KL flight number printed on it. It why despite being a codeshare flight number, there's award seats available on it. This same thing happened years back with AF and Cityjet. Back then really caused confusion as some flights were the 1st type and some the 2nd. Thus you could book a DL ticket on some, but not all AF CDG-DUB flights, despite Cityjet flying all of them, as some were type 1 and some were type 2.
Most agents, like passengers are only aware of the 1st type. If was 1st, the KLM agents would be correct. KLM has no interline agreements for bags, etickets, or even paper tickets with ZQ.