Originally Posted by WHBM
There must be a whole manual at the Continental, and the other US majors,
PR department for all sorts of eventualities, describing when you include the commuters in your business ("Our network, sir ? Oh yes, we serve 500 cities nationwide") and when you exclude them ("Disgraceful service, sir, on a plane painted in our livery, booked on our flight number, boarded at our terminal and with our in-flight mag in the seats ? Oh no, that is nothing to do with us").
That's the reality, and the "manual" is one page, probably a single paragraph.
CO (and the rest) have a marketing agreement with their feeders. You paint your planes in our livery and we'll sell tickets for you. Period. The mainline plays no part in day-to-day operations, it is ExpressJet's crew and dispatchers who ****ed this up, and I doubt they even have a direct line to CO.
It's the nature of codeshares, and since these have been going on for 20 years you'd think people (ie. media) would know how it all works by now. It's only the public face of CO etc. that's involved, and while they are technically correct that it's all 'nuffin to do wiv us' they do suffer the adverse publicity. For a few days, then it's business as usual. Not going to change anything.