Flyby1206
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2004
- Posts
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Ok, so where does the jetBlue and American deal fall in this balance. American stops flying SJU to just about everywhere, and BOS-SFO, in exchange for for allowing its customers to book on those routes?
First you have to understand that the majority of travel sites and travel agents access airline schedules/availability through Global Distribution Systems (GDS).
Example: AA flt 1234 goes ORD-SEA. AA is the operating carrier (it says AA on the side of the plane) and they are the marketing carrier (it shoes as AA1234 in the GDS system)
AA has a codeshare agreement with Alaska Airlines that allows Alaska to put their airline code (AS) on a given number of seats per flight, and put an Alaska flight number on that flight AA is operating. So that AA1234 might ALSO show up in GDS as AS5678. When a passenger looks on Orbitz the top two choices are AA1234 and AS5678. If they are a frequent flier on Alaska they might book under the AS5678 and get frequent flier miles, points, etc for it even though it is operated by AA.
A "codeshare" allows multiple airlines to put their two letter codes on a flight operated by another carrier. This beneficial because two carriers can get exposure on a route with only one carrier operating the flights, or in the case of ORD-SEA Alaska and AA can both codeshare on all of the partners routes ORD-SEA so that they appear to have double exposure on a route. Following me so far?
In a codeshare agreement the operating carrier (AA, since it is their metal) collects all the revenue from the flight, even the revenue from the people who booked AS5678. Then they distribute a small portion of that cash to Alaska airlines to cover the marketing costs (Alaska would be referred to as the "marketing carrier" in this example).
Now it gets complicated...
Jetblue and AA do not have a codeshare agreement. They have an "interline agreement" which is very close, but not the same. AA is not placing their two letter airline code on any jetblue flights, and jetblue is not placing their code on any AA flights. A customer has to go to either jetblue.com or aa.com to book an interline ticket where for instance they would go BTV-JFK(on jetblue) and JFK-CDG(on AA). Frequent fliers still get some mileage/points, but not as beneficial as if they booked a flight on their particular frequent flier carrier.
APA pilots have a clause in their contract that requires APA approval of any domestic codeshare agreements (Alaska has been approved by APA years ago), and if this approval isnt granted then the whole thing can go to arbitration which gets ugly.
The AA/JB interline agreement has some caveats. An AA frequent flier must book a two leg journey on AA and JB to get points. They cant just fly BTV-JFK(on JB) and get AA points. Also, a JB customer cant just book JFK-CDG(on AA) and get jetblue frequent flier points, they need both carriers in the itinerary.
Will this interline agreement ever develop into a codeshare? My guess is yes, but talk to the APA pilots about that.
Also you mentioned "scope." That is completely different than codeshare/interline agreements. Scope refers to a section of a contract that restricts what aircraft can be flown by who in the name of the company. SWA scope says something to the likes of "All aircraft flown on behalf of Southwest Airlines will be flown by pilots on the SWAPA seniority list." AA and most other legacy carriers scope clauses say "APA pilots will fly everything on behalf of American Airlines EXCEPT 50 seat aircraft and under, and we also grant Eagle to fly 47 CRJ700s as long as they are a wholly owned carrier, and we also allow Eagle to fly 40 ATR-72s." The aircraft that we at Eagle operate all carry the AA airline code when a person looks up the flight in a GDS system. AA4549 ORD-PIA *Operated by American Eagle Airlines.
Hope some of this makes sense, it is a broad generalization and overview of the codeshare/interline/scope crap. It gets really complicated really quick.