airoli

No offense, but I believe that when I see it.

edited to add: Of course, for any flight operated by a commercial air carrier, a flight plan using that carrier's designation (WK/EDW) must be filed. So if an Edelweiss aircraft flies ZRH-CDG, a WK flight number will exist in flight ops systems. The question is: Are any seats commercially sold under that number?

The business model and commercial objectives of Edelweiss, a largely wholesale-driven leisure operation, are better served outside the cost framework of a Star Alliance integration. (full member or connect). To the extent that Edelweiss / Helveitc provide wetlease capacity, full Star integration exists.

Nick Art

I disagree.
While a lot of EDW routes are holiday oriented, routes like LAS, SAN, YVR and yes even destinations like RAK, GIG and SJC have a not insignificant amount of business pax. I think it'd be beneficial for EDW to gather some additional connecting passengers and for people to chose EDW more readily. I certainly would, as I currently avoid EDW, just for the fact that I don't get any miles, despite me really loving the airline.

I don't think the marginal cost of the introduction of EDW as a *A connect partner would be so significiant that it'd ruing the business model of EDW. Especially since most passengers don't have a FFP and if they do they are usually M&M members and get miles already. and UA members already get miles as well! The pax manifest on WK already shows *A status afaik and the crew know how to handle it. Lounge access on the LX codeshare is already included anyway!
The only real change would be that EDW would hand out miles to all *A FFPs and not just M&M and UA, which would make the whole ordeal so much more logical and simpler isntead of the mess of rules and * there is now. And I bet EDW would even gain a pax or even two with this move.

GVA

Well for example, if I take last year when a WK A340 was used on a GVA-ZRH, it was flown as LX2807

Nick Art

Well I couldn't find any information on WK flight numbers :/ I guess I must have misread that then...

I still dislike the confusing non inclusion of WK into the *A sheme

hugolover

A good few suits on EDI-ZRH.

Fabo.sk

Sorry, but that is blatantly untrue. Under wetlease agreements, whether ad-hoc or long-term, flight plan under designation of aircraft owner is not filled. Not normally anyway. Instead, the flight is filled under the carrier who sells the flight and buys the service from the lessor.
To wit, you can can take a look at all the Helvetic flights, flying under SWR ICAO codes, instead of their own OAW code, or look at Vienna-Barcelona flights by Eurowings, who even sometimes use Germany-registered planes, but still, the flight is filled as AUA, and also uses "mainline" terminals instead of "lowcost"/Eurowings terminals at both ends. To wit, Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter has their own LGW code, but the flights they operate for Eurowings are flown under Eurowings code; just as the flights they flew for Air Berlin used to be Air Berlin coded.

airoli

Hmm. I remember a visit to the Swiss ATC management center near Zurich a few years ago, where it was explained to me that for them, a Helvetic aircraft was always showing as OAW. And they showed some example (ZRH-WAW on a F100 if memory serves) on their control screens....

RedChili

I realize that ATC can probably see more information than what's available on Flightradar, but here's a screenshot from FR right now of HB-AZC operating for Swiss as SWR87R:

Fabo.sk

They would see that the aircraft operator is OAW, there is a separate tag for that. But the callsign - the "main" identifier for the flight - will be under SWR.
(it might also be, that a few years ago, OAW and SWR did have such an agreement that Helvetic flights would be filled under OAW numbers, but it's not standard)