RNE

How come on continental.com when I try to book a flight from CLE to CAI it exclaims, "! Neither Continental nor its codeshare partners serve Cairo EG (CAI) using a Continental flight number. You may modify your search criteria, or call 1-800-300-1547 for assistance.," but if I telephone Continental and ask about the same route, they can book it for me. After all, KLM is a codeshare partner serving Cairo. So what if there's no Continental flight number? Other online engines, like Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity, can handle it. Why can't continental.com?

UpgradeMe

Because it sucks?

J.Edward

I'd say there are a few improvments for sure that would spruce up co.com. However, if you think co.com 'sucks' try some of the other's sites. IMHO, Continental's website is much better function wise than the majority of the others.

As far as the connections not showing up - I'd wager the KLM flights are not loaded into co's system.

PIT_Flyer

CO's website is NOT completely integrated to incorporate codeshares. The only way to book these codeshares is to call CO.

I wouldn't say CO's website sucks - in fact, I think CO has the best website among all carriers...It's just that codeshares are not fully incorporated into CO's website.

RNE

That's obvious. Why AREN'T they fully incorporated?

apirchik

You are mixing 2 things here. KLM is a Sky Team partner and is a full joint ticketing partner with Continental. Once there is no CO flight number on the AMS - CAI route - this flight is not on the CO - KLM codeshare map and in this term, Continental does not serve CAI. CO.com sells only CO coded flights and will not sell you a KLM coded flight. To get flights on partner airlines - you must use the phone or other online travel agencies.

channa

It's probably revenue protection.

If it showed the partner flights, perhaps there would be cases where the partner flights would be less expsensive, and the consumer would pick those over the CO flights.

I suspect they believe the loss of business from the occasional person who is given a false negative (i.e., "we don't go there," when in reality they can get you most of the way) is less than the lost business from showing partners and losing business to them.

After all, in your case there was no lost business, you just used a different method to book it.

Of course the ideal would be only to show partners for routes where they have no service, but that'd be asking them to modify co.com, which means they'd likely break something else.

AKelley728

Can you give me some examples of airline websites that do this?

rkkwan

aa.com does sell non-codeshare, non-partner tickets. But that's the exception to the rule.

From NYC

NWA’s web site also does this. And, forgetting for the moment about KLM, CO.com does not show NW’s flights that are code-shared, such as Shanghai (which I’ve been complaining about for about a year now). I thought CO and NWA were supposed to be good buddies who shared everything.

This is a stupid revenue thing, except that it costs CO more to run things this way: 1) you call their phone center on an 800 # to speak to live human beans (sic); or 2) you go offsite to work your ticket, and maybe fly another airline (when I’ve flown to Shanghai, I’ve chosen to go NWA all the way as a result).

Why frustrate your customers this way?

hughw

I had the same experience trying to get an award ticket from EWR to Nice France. Nothing showed up, but when I called I CO, they easliy found some Air France flight that did the trick,some direct as Delta code shares and some entirely on AF through CDG in Paris.

The only award tickets that show up on the website are CO, KLM and NW,

RNE

As previous posters mentioned, both aa.com and nwa.com will book flights from CLE to CAI. I just checked united.com and it too does. Need I go on? I’ll assume not. But I will observe that this seems to establish that other airline websites are quite capable of doing what continental.com inexplicably is not. And it begs the question, Why not?

OK. Why isn’t it?

If so, then why would Continental show ANY partner flights, like on other routes?

apirchik

Again, you are comparing apples and oranges. The discussion above is whether you can book non code-share flights on an airline website, not specifically CLE to CAI. As mentioned above, aa.com allows booking of partner flights. NWA and UAL do have codeshares to CAI (NW sells KLM flights as well since it was virtually the same airline). Continental does not have the codeshare.
Except for a few that allow it, most airlines around the globe limit their own website to their own coded flights only.

Show me a single airline that covers the whole world. This is what an alliance is for, not a single airline. CO does not have codeshares to many airports, some of them are much bigger than CAI (KUL, SYD, MEL, AKL, JNB to name a few). I guess Continental does not have the need to sell these tickets with it's own code.

Continental.com will not show you partner flights on revenue ticketing and will show only NW, DL and KLM on reward travel. That's a limited functionalty indeed but it is no exception to what's common around the globe.

apirchik

One more remark - it seems that the Sky Team alliance have the worse joint facilities of the big 3 alliances as the members of the other 2 have much better partner booking system - online and offline.

channa

The codeshare agreements are for a finite number of flights between carriers (and I believe they're subject to government approval). So, CO does not waste flight numbers on less popular routes. I suppose they don't sell too many tix to Cairo, that picking up booking revenue from KL is not a priority on that route.