Originally Posted by Lemurs
Is there a particular attraction to buying a codehsare that I am missing though? Particularly for CO/NW. It's not like you'd be able to get 100% EQM on NW metal just by booking on CO.com right? So why does it matter so much if your NW segment has a CO flight number? My corporate travel dept could care less. I feel I am missing a big point of booking the codeshare that people here want...anyone help me understand?
Fares. When the fares in the market are different among carriers, you can use the lower-carrier's code to receive the fare, while flying either of the carrier's metal.
Say CO has a lower fare than NW, but CO is tight with inventory (i.e., they have the fare, but no seats available at that fare). If there are seats in the CO-coded fare class on NW, it may be possible to still get that good fare, but on NW. Whereas a NW code may cost you more.
The other advantage is schedules. Say you have a nice CO outbound, but the last return on CO is too early to meet your needs. The latest return on NW works for you, so you can book the CO out, NW back all under a single code, and still take advantage of a RT fare. This, among servicing additional markets, was the original logic behind codeshares.