From Airlines Route Update Blog

why not Newark - Montreal?

Why is it that AC does codeshares with UA and now proposes to do so with CO but never did so with US?

they are saving us from the horrors of US

The YYC-YZF codeshare stands out for me (mostly out of personal interest) but it's almost odd they'd pick some of the codeshare routes they did. I've at times been wishing UA would codeshare some of these routes! CO will do just fine.. hopefully it starts sometime in the not too distant future.

What's the point of these codeshares, or codeshares at all?

As a customer, I am always most confused. I buy a ticket on AC, and end up on a UA plane. And vice versa. And I get rapped by US Customs or Canada Customs by pre-filling out the flight number that I bought on my landing card (the night before), if I get it wrong.

If AC wants to market CO flights, and take a profit or loss on operating them -- fine, they should be able to do that through contractual arrangements. Not by exposing the customer to vastly different service standards, fine print, weird check-ins, different bag limits, etc.

How many of our grandma's or elderly relatives have bought a ticket, on, say, AC, gone to an AC check-in counter, and been told to take a hike over to UA, in another building (in the case of LAX, on the other end of the airport)?? Really, its unnacceptable for this to be happening in an industry whose success *relies* upon customer service.

I don't care if anyone responds to my rant or not....but I think industry participants need to sit down and figure out how to abolish code-sharing, and how to make the experience as transparent to the customer as possible. People travelled on multiple airlines just fine before the first AA/QF codeshares came out in the late 1980s.

+1 ^

(although not sure if the rant was really needed )

What about saving us from the horrors of CO?

That seems quite unreasonable to me. The codeshared flight number is still the correct flight number isn't it? Are they going to ask for the fin number next?

I never understood codesharing either - if I have an AC segment on a CO ticket with an AC flight #, does AC get more/less than revenue than if the AC flight was with a CO flight #?

Cheers,

Codesharing bring a number of benefits to the the airlines.

What made you think it has to benefit the PAX?

Well its happened to me twice, I put the codeshare'd flight number (ie: AC4084) instead of the actual flight number (ie: UA939), and the Customs dude went into a typical line of "let's shake out this liar" round of questioning, until realizing that I had arrived on a UA flight, but had written down the AC codeshare number.

There's nothing illegal or dishonest about it -- but a Customs officer doesn't get a manifest for an AC flight, an LH flight, a CO flight, a SK flight, etc., etc., when an UA flight arrives in Canada. He gets an UA manifest, with a list of UA passengers that are 'of interest' (ie: previous infractions, arriving from at-risk origins), and has to work off of that.

Like what KVS? Other than mass confusion, and forcing airlines to train their employees to say, "this flight is AC 593, also United xxx, Lufthansa aaa, SAS bbb, ..."? And all the mess in airline IT that it causes (which I'm sure you've had a glimpse at, since you run that availability tool)?

Can't the airlines just act in agency for other airlines, when they sell the flights of other airlines, rather than selling them themselves, as though its their own service? Couldn't they just enter into the risk-sharing arrangements behind-the-scenes instead of dumping it all onto the customer?


Well the PAX are the ones paying the bills ultimately, are they not? "Grandma" who got scr*wed over by AC/UA at LAX, with their codeshare nonsense, may very well just fly Westjet next time around, an airline that doesn't play the same sort of bait-and-switch game.

Don't underestimate the value of an impressive-looking route map that covers the entire planet, while maintaining a fleet that's 30 times smaller than would be required to physically fly those routes.

There are lots of other benefits too, including getting to keep fuel surcharges, based on the marketing flight numbers.

If AC looses 1 grandmother and gains 10 other PAX, based on their ability to market and sell non-existent AC flights, do you think it would be a tough choice to make?

Well, for one thing, they can say they offer service to destinations that they don't fly their equipment to. As a prime example, Air Canada doesn't send their own equipment here to CVG. But they do fly here. I can book AC 5XXX CVG-ORD, and then onward on AC equipment to YYZ.

Also, often codesharing is coupled with cost and revenue sharing. So, a flight from XXX-YYY might have costs shared equally by AC and Airline YY, while AC keeps the revenue from bookings it secures, while Airline YY keeps the revenue from the bookings it gets, even though its the same aircraft.

Thirdly, it can allow carriers to serve destinations they don't think there is enough demand for on their own. So if AC thinks it can fill part of a plane from XXX-YYY, but not the whole thing, they can codeshare with another carrier, who also thinks it can fill half a plane, but not the whole thing. So, instead of having to have customers connect on another carrier, AC or Airline Y it is codesharing with can both make money serving a destination they never could on their own.

Sometimes it results in competition and lower fares. Often, for example, AC and UA offer different prices for the exact same flight going ORD-YYZ. Book on the lower priced site, and maybe you can save a few bucks.

It also says on the ticket who's operating the flight (although, i agree, depending on who issued the ticket, this can be more challenging). But it keeps us on our toes, to look who is operating the flight.