Sorry for this question as it is common knowlege to some, but how does a codeshare work? Could someone explain to me what the benefit for Air Canada to codeshare is? for example the new agreement w/ Thai Airways to coseshare thru London to Bangkok? And, why would the AA/BA codeshare be uncompetitive-like? Thanks.
Steve

Exactly how the selling of another airline's seats works depends on the agreement. Airlines like it because they get to keep a commission for selling the seats, plus they then get the connecting passenger traffic on their own flights. So, using the Thai Airways example, if AC sells a ticket from YYZ-LHR-BKK, they get a commission for the LHR-BKK portion and force the passenger onto their own flight to London. Otherwise, the passenger may fly the competition to LHR, or maybe even fly UA or NW all the way transpacific. Thai also codeshares with AC, so the reverse happens.

The concern with the AA/BA alliance is that these two airlines would then operate the majority of the flights from the US to London, and could use their market dominance to squeeze out competitors and raise fares.

Stu- thanks.

History shows that code-share works,it is just not exactly known how. I was in a meeting today in which some very talented mathematicians discussed the issue. They have a number of theories on how to simulate booking preference models for code-shares, but none of them work very accurately.

The marketing solution is to put a codeshare on everything that moves.

One would expect on a code share that you could put BKK into AC's website and get details of the codeshare flights. The AC website, however, does not recognize BKK as a destination.