felis

Yes,
this was my palnning:
CDG-LAX, then LAX-MPL (France).
But I am flexible, it could have been
LAX-FNI, LAX, CFE, or even others in South of France, plus a final MPL-CDG.

All these are skyteam flights.
Believe me, when you request LAX-MPL or all other destinations, no more seat !!!

But if you buy LAX-CDG on Delta and CDG-MPL or FNI or CFE on Air France, the business goes on.
So obviously, one more time, Skyteam is nothing.
BTW, take care about your pseudo on Air France now, you need to print it cap locked, otherwise you are no longer a nice, beautiful, well appreciated customer , just a funny guy that spend minutes and hours on the computer (for nothing ).

AC*SE

Sounds like the problem here is capacity, not the alliance.

brenno

Yeah. This may very well mean that there is space in a plane, but not in a certain class or that DL for instance didn't buy any seats there.

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Cheers,

Brenno.

felis

I do not agree, guies.

The problem is a problem of capacity for Delta, as they did not 'buy' enough seats.

The problem for a Delta customer is that Delta is not good: they missed seats for MPL, for FNI, for CFE, a lot of destinations.

BUT I am not a Delta customer, I am a Skyteam customer. I am in the middle of (of what, BTW, what did they say in their advertisment ? )
And, as a customer of Skyteam, I do not have my ticket, when I know that there are seats in the plane, and seats at VERY goods rates (90 US $ return ticket between CDG and FNI, for instance.

One conclusion Skyteam is NOTHING.
It is nothin, because you ask Skyteam, and finally, you go to Delta for one half, and Air France for the other half.I am making their business. Not paid for that

juuceman

yeah.. it sounds like their computers don't show different lines' availability.. if felis was able to purchase tickets seperately from dl and af then they both had availablility and the computers should show this availability no matter which company he called.. it's not like he was trying to buy a code share, he was simply trying to use the alliance.. on the * allaince can one do this?? probably.. on sk***am can we do this?? nope.. we just get our medallion benefits reduced because of the surge in af elites who would otherwise be entitled to systemwides.. this makes no sense.. of course, neither does the alliance with KE if dl won't even sell their tickets because of worries about lawsuits and poor safety records..

GrapeDane

In the perfect world felis should be able to get his ticket, but I believe that SkyTeam has a lot of work to do.
When Delta worked wtih Swissair it worked very well due to revenue sharing. So far DL and AF are not doing this. I guess that they need to jump over some goverment regulations.
I have already seen improvements on my flight two weeks ago to France. My intra France flights (booked as AF ticket since DL did not have codeshare to BIQ) was credited right away.
Our DL flight was three hours late from ATL, so we missed our planed flight. The transfer desk handled the changes of the ticket rapidly and without any problems.
I am sure there will be a lot of improvements coming.
It will be interesting to see which airlines will join SkyTeam.

BlondeBomber

There are also problems in the other alliances. Not all Star Alliance flights are eligible for the same fare on the same routing even when it is the same metal but different codeshare flight numbers for airlines within the alliance.

In addition, one codeshare may be sold out even though there are lots of seats on the plane and you cannot get the cheaper fare (even on full fare tickets) because it is the wrong carrier (even though it is a Star Alliance member). Integration is getting better though and there are more options now. I understand that translation software is (has been?) being put in on Star Alliance to help the various computer systems "see" one another.

So just as I do with Air France, I sometimes end up buying several different tickets to get a cheaper fare.

Sylvest941

I agree, what is the problem of having one ticket on DL and one on AF, since you get miles on both???
The problem is you get a better fare with the same code throughout... depending on space availability! This is called Yield Management

brenno

I know from more than one source that Skyteam is working on ironing out the problems. But that will take some time. I have had a lot of problems with AF as a DL customer myself (esp. on AF-tickets). But recently it seemed to improve somewhat. AF even gave me recognition on the phone on my status right away when I gave my Skymiles numbers. So things are getting better. I also understood that the major part of the alliance is about getting the technology to work closer together. If that is the truth, then we can expect a lot of improvements in the future.

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Cheers,

Brenno.

felis

Seems I do not totaly agree:
'What is the problem if you got one ticket on AF, the other on DL, and you will get miles for both'.
No, it was not easy.
1/ As I said, I was flexible, so I tried all possibles destinations in South of France 150 miles from my final destination, and none of them was available for Delta. So, even when flexible, it tooks me a lot of time.
2/ I had to made my connection by myself. I get to tickets.
3/ There was a good deal on getting a return through LYS (LYon, double miles). But for having it, I would have had to get a ticket on AF that is not sold on-line: LYS-FNI + FNI-CDG. They just allow LYS-FNI and back or CDG-FNI and back. So; I would have had to buy one on-line (to get the 4000 bonus for first on the web), and the other to the Air france shop, Which cost me 1 hour of my time.

And I would add too:
I do not complain about getting an expensive choice, I had no choice. Means that Delta has no way to book a seat not-codeshared when all its Delta seats are full. Yes, it seems that sharing the revenue rather than the seats would make more sense for us.
They just forget that the ****ed customer is in the middle.

GrapeDane

What I don't understand - why don't Delta sell codeshared ticket on each Air France flights (and the other way around)? It would make sense, so you book on each others destinations. I guess it must be to old thing about codesharing, revenuesharing and yieldsharing are all different animals.
As SkyTeam evolves, we can only hope for improvements.

[This message has been edited by GrapeDane (edited 04-09-2001).]

felis

I like these alliances !
They work well. For AF, sure . For Delta probably too . For the customers, some of them probably get some benefits.

For me, just to get some fresh news on this poor story (nobody is hear, that not a big deal, but the advertisment around Skytem is a big deal, as it is a big business):

Got my ticket on Delta, made the trip, got the miles.All is OK

Got my ticket on AF. As it was on-line, I could not do anything else than get it with my AF Frequence Plus number.
Naturally, as always, I specified to the counter FA that I needed, I wanted, I absolutely wanted to credit that on Delta, not on AF.
Yes, yes, was the answer in CDG. Yes also in FNI

Guess what, my flight is on Frequence Plus. Sent two letters, will take probably some months, and, at the end, will get a letter with apologies, may be also nothing

Skyteam is nothing...

brenno

Yeah that sucks indeed. That is why I don't even think about booking online yet. AF is aware of this problem and will work on it they said. It is in their disadvantage as well. Because Skyteam should give them extra business and but ff's on other Skyteam carriers cannot book online now.

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Cheers,

Brenno.

brenno

Double posted

[This message has been edited by brenno (edited 05-18-2001).]

rcs85551

I noticed some changes here in Germany. Made my res through my travel agent, called AF on my own for seats.
The agent
a) was very happy to give me premium seating based on my GM status with DL and was happy to enter the number into my PNR (everytime before, AF did not want to know about SkyMiles)
b) collected all my contact information in Germany and in the U.S. in case anything happens (I also did not run into this before)
c) thanked my for my business.

I was stunned. If they actually get my baggage there, well... ticket was 20% cheaper than at DL (although part of it is on DL metal...)