I'm switching to Star Alliance and trying to pick a program (although at the moment CO is leading the pack.)

One thing I have noticed is I can't book CO tickets out of EAU as the new EAU-ORD flights do not have CO codeshares. The EAU-ORD service is new as of March 1, 2010 - so is a CO codeshare on this route something I can expect to happen in the future? As it stands, it is prohibitively expensive to ticket EAU-ORD-CO Metal since I'd have to pay United's $269 EAU-ORD round trip fare for EAU-ORD hops. That would be a pretty strong incentive to stick to UA metal, which then becomes a strong incentive to start out with Mileage Plus (although I am currently annoyed that I would not be able to get a status match to UA until Feb, I shouldn't have any trouble maintaining 50k EQM on United and would thus beat my CO Plat status for upgrades.)

I could just stick with flying out of MSP, but if I'm going to do that anyway, it may (ugh) make sense to just stick with DL (ugh again) where I'm currently Plat. It seems DL is the cheaper alternative except for US, and well, then I'd have to fly US.

Why not just ticket on UA and credit miles to CO?

If I can ticket on CO, then I can likely fly only the EAU-ORD leg on UA metal. If I ticket on United, I'll likely be flying the entire itinerary on UA metal.

If I'm going to fly the whole itinerary on UA metal, then there are advantages to being a UA elite instead of a CO elite - higher upgrade priority, better IRROPS help, use of CR-1's, blah blah.

In other words, if I'm going to pretty much always be flying UA, why bother with CO at all?

There are a number of CO codeshares out of ORD on united.com -- particularly to IAH. You can book everything on united.com and post the miles to OnePass and get upgrades on Continental metal.

While that may be true, it's not price competitive - for example, looking at the next trip I'd like to book it's double the price booked through UA as it is through CO ($1k vs. $500ish)

I wouldn't expect a codeshare on a small-town flight like this.

There's a limited number of codeshares that the two airlines have been approved for, and they're not exactly going to use them on small-town service like this. I believe that this service may even be government subsidized.

Channa
Perhaps you can help. When I use CO.com to book a flight to the West Coast and the fare bucket is B, why do the CO codeshares (CO flight number, UA metal) show only 100% EQMs rather than the 150%? When I force it to show only Y fares, I get the same 100% EQMs on the UA segment. However, when I force an F fare, it gives the correct 150% EQMs for the UA segment. I thought that CO would recognize this flight segment as a CO segment for EQM purposes. Is that not the case? Thanks

Radonc1

Assuming CO and UA map buckets to each other (which they probably do, since CO changed their buckets to align with UA), B and Y fares should post at 150%.

I would guess that it's a display issue at co.com rather than anything else going on.

I agree wholly with channa and add that CO's codesharing EAU-ORD likely won't lower fares on that route.

Makes sense on the limited code shares, but I would absolutely expect it to lower the effective fares. Yes, EAU-ORD as origin and destination would be the same, but with the code share, EAU-ORD-IAH-PHX would likely be maybe $100 more than ORD-IAH-PHX instead of the current $269-$349 it is booked as a separate, add-on ticket to CO's ticket.

Anyway, thanks for the answer, which is I should plan on booking on UA. May need to look at just flying out of MSP.