Code Sharing what is it?

[Nadzab]

All the airlines seem to be 'Code Sharing' these days. But what exactly IS code sharing? Why do they do it? Who benefits? How do they benefit?.... and why, when I'm looking for my flights departure gate do I have to wait until eternity until my flight number comes up because,......... it is being cycled through with all the other 'code shared' airlines and in multiple languages just to add to the confusion.

[kenparry]

Code sharing:

Many scheduled airlines have joined groups such as "one world" and "Star Alliance", which are really just marketing ploys. The alliance produces what appears to the customer to be a world-wide network and allows the member airlines to sell each others flights.

See Codeshare agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_share)

Also, google "one world" and "Star Alliance" for much more info.

[Capetonian]

Code sharing allows an airline which would not normally have traffic rights on a certain route to offer a more complete service, for example through fares and FF membership benefits from origin to destination, terminal sharing, through baggage check, and so on. It can also offer economies of scale.

There's lot more to it, that's in a nutshell. There are lots of other types of codeshare, leased and blocked space, capped and uncapped, it also goes into the realms of franchise operations, wet/dry lease. Codeshare is a very general term covering a multitude of different types of arrangement.

[bfisk]

Codesharing is essentially the practical working of an alliance. I bet you've travelled on a flight where the ticket was issued by one airline but the actual flight carried out by another airline? It would say so on the ticket ("flight operated by...").

Many airlines can mutually benefit from cooperating on various or the same routes, to offer the public more city pairs, more frequiencies, more seats or whatever. This is done in the fashion that they codeshare flights, allowing airline A to sell seats on airline B and vice verca; let's say airline A flies internationally and airline B flies domestically; you could book your ticket with airline A, and they would be your single point of contact.

[Doors to Automatic]

The airline alliances (an extension of informal codesharing) were formed in the 1990s in an attempt to facilitate seamless travel between a potentially vast number of worldwide points by integrating the networks and schedules of 20-30 member airlines. Typically each alliance will have at least one major player in the USA, in Europe, in Latin America and in Asia plus a dozen or more regional carriers across all continents.

Often carriers "codeshare" meaning that on the ticket of a passenger originating in Des Moines, Iowa and flying with American to Chicago and then BA to London and onto Edinburgh, the whole trip will appear as "AA" on the ticket, even though most of the trip is operated by BA. Codesharing gives passengers peace of mind that psychologically they are travelling with their local carrier (and therefore the safety of their local carrier) regardless of where they are going in the world. It also gives the alliance clout in the reservation system as the routings with several codes will appear several times versus routings with a single carrier would only appear once. For example BMI's London-Edinburgh route carries codes of about 8-9 other carriers so will appear on 8-9 lines of the CRS even thoiugh it is a single flight!

The alliance model does have its flaws though. It has been built around the concept of a number of large hub airports (e.g. Dallas, Chicago, Frankfurt, Amsterdam) and is very much focussed on facilitating connecting traffic. Quite often an alliance will try and "poach" passengers from the backyard of another alliance whilst charging it's own originating passengers a fortune.

For an illustration of what I mean go onto ba.com and look at the price for a Club World ticket from London to Dallas. Now on the same website enquire about the same flight but this time start your journey in Amsterdam. Note the huge price differential! It is often up to 50% cheaper to start your journey in Amsterdam than it is in London.

Meantime KLM is offering similarly good fares to UK passengers transiting through Amsterdam whilst charging a lot more to the Dutch boarding in Amsterdam!

All that happens in the end is that everybody poaches everybody elses passengers!

Worse still the AMS-LGW-DFW passenger costs the airline a lot more to carry than the LGW-DFW passenger as there is both the additional AMS-LGW leg as well as the cost of the transit (moving bags etc).

You can now begin to see why so many alliance carriers are in such a financial mess!

Throw in Low Cost carriers into the short-haul market and the future of alliances looks quite bleak. I can see the allaince model being suitable only for trips where part or all of the journey is long-haul within the next few years.

[jetjockeyusa]

Interline = Regular Friends :suspect:
Codesharing = Friends with benefits :ok:
Alliance = Marriage :eek: