Airline Partnerships Are Confusing—Here’s What You Need to Know – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
A quick rundown of the difference between interline, codeshare, and frequent flier partnership.
In the Trenches: Do It Ourselves or Partner with Someone Else? – Intuit Small Business Blog
I’m debating how to deal with frequent flier redemptions.
“From a customer perspective, there is no benefit to [codeshare]” — Not true if the customer’s ticket is being paid for by Uncle Sam. Here’s the ruling from http://www.gao.gov/assets/510/502181.pdf
Travel under a ticket issued by a U.S. certificated air carrier which leases space on the aircraft of a foreign air carrier under a “code-share” arrangement in international air transportation is considered to be “transportation provided by air carriers holding certificates” as required under 49 U.S.C. App. § 1517 (1988), the Fly America Act. Thus, passengers may properly use tickets paid for by the government under a “codeshare” arrangement if the tickets were purchased from the U.S. air carrier.
I often hear where travelers say they do not know who is operating their flight, be it another airline (bought through KLM, flown on Delta) or through a subsidiary (Pinnacle dba Delta Connection). I have never in my life had any questions about who was operating my flight. I think every flight I have ever had clearly states on the ticket who is operating the flight. Most people don’t care and probably don’t pay attention. I do have friends/coworkers who gripe all the time about not wanting to fly on a partner yet seem to not pay attention when the info is provided before they purchase the ticket. Sorry, just had a friend gripe to me about this same topic and I wanted to vent!!!
Matt — Lots of people don’t care what plane they’re on, but they do care about getting to it. It’s especially frustrating when you end up at the wrong terminal. I have a flight in a few weeks on Delta, operated by KLM, so it will leave from LAX Terminal 2. This is indicated on the itinerary on delta.com in rather small type; it’s there if you know to look for it, but I can easily see someone asking to be dropped off at Delta, ending up in Terminal 5.
Of course, the same problem can also happen with a single airline that uses multiple terminals. This happened to me once at JFK, shortly after Delta moved their LAX departures from Terminal 3 to Terminal 4; the terminal was on the boarding pass but I somehow missed it and ended up getting there the long way, by airside bus via Terminal 3 (barely made the flight). Even knowing your terminal doesn’t always help — one time at LAX, a taxi driver flatly refused to drop me off at Terminal 6 for my United flight because he wanted to take the shortcut to Terminal 7 (gotta love Culver City taxis). At least a single airline would usually use adjacent terminals.
The obvious solution is to make the correct terminal prominent so that nobody will miss it, but that’s really hard to do, given that people don’t always know to specifically look for terminal information.
I don’t care for codeshares as it lets the two codeshare carriers look like one carrier, but they provide the same flight operations as two non-codeshare carriers. It’s still airline A connecting to airline B. Governments should never have permitted this to be done.
If you start sending your clients to someone else for one reason, it gives that other company the chance to ‘steal’ your clients for other services and you could loose the client. Keep everying in-house no matter what, even if it means raising the cost. You could have different cost levels for the service with a higher cost for first time clients wanting to book mileage awards, to a lower level for clients you do other things for that does make money for you.
David – That’s true, but my hope is that I’m working with a company that wouldn’t have an interest in the other part of our business. Still, it is a concern.