Airline codesharing — government approved dishonesty

I’ve heard a story about Abraham Lincoln that can apply to codesharing. He stated, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg.” The same applies to codesharing between airlines. As it now is practiced, it is simply bait and switch. At best, codesharing can be called misleading.

Codesharing is where one airline sells seats on another airline’s aircraft and uses its own airline nomenclature and flight numbers. To the consumer, looking at their ticket or online reservation, it appears that the flight is on a single airline. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. These codesharing procedures that allow a United airplane to be called a US Airways flight or a Delta aircraft to be designated with an Air France flight number are simply bald-faced lies condoned by our government. The only purpose the codeshares serve is to mislead the public.

Alliances are in the news these days with the apparent approval of Continental’s alliance with United and the rest of the Star Alliance. Even outside of alliances, codesharing is continuing with deals between US Airways and Qatar Airways in which each airline will be able to sell seats on the other operator’s planes and similar arrangements are in force between US Airways and Swiss International Airlines on flights between Zurich and Philadephia.

Internationally, the airline code-share partner airlines rules and regulations don’t match. Much carry-on luggage allowed on an an American Airlines (AA) flight to London will not be allowed on continuing flights in Europe. The same rule conflicts exist between virtually every codesharing U.S. and foreign carrier, but passengers rarely learn about these differences until they are stopped unexpectedly when attempting to board continuing flights in Europe, Asia or Australia.

Lost luggage rules make the lost luggage the responsibility of the last codeshare carrier. Even though a passenger’s ticket is designated as being on AA flights from the U.S. to Europe, AA will disown any responsibility for lost luggage if the bags are transferred to another airline, even to their own codeshare partner flying a plane with an AA flight number. Plus, minimum liability is far lower for AA than it is for Iberia, Finnair or Qantas. Warsaw Convention international liability is only $640 per suitcase, where U.S. DOT standards apply $3,000 of liability per passenger.

Perhaps even more pernicious and misleading is the major airline branding of regional carriers. Colgan Air flies under the colors of Continental Airlines. Mesaba operates as an arm of Northwest. Atlantic Southeast Airways has Delta spashed on its tail. Comair flies with similar Delta markings. These airlines are shown on websites and in Internet searches as part of a single seamless major airline. However, when problems strike, passengers learn quickly that, legally speaking, these airlines designated as part of a larger airline, are in no way related other than through marketing agreements.

Even DOT regulations treat these smaller airlines far different than the major airlines and their pilots have far less flying experience in many cases. While hoodwinked passengers assume they are flying on Delta when they buy a ticket on Delta.com from Boston to Washington DC, in most cases they never set foot on a Delta aircraft. In the Northwest, Horizon Airlines flies many routes for United, even though the tickets are sold through the United site and there is no clear delineation between Horizon and United.

I could tap out hundreds of words just listing the current code-sharing flights. If these were automobile companies, this codesharing foolishness would be tantamount to calling a Ford truck a Honda Civic, or a Chevy Metro a Cadillac Escalade. When Air China is Air Canada, when United is Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines is CSA Czech Airlines it seems apparent that the public is being mislead.

Why? Why shouldn’t consumers be able to clearly see on which airline’s aircraft they will actually be flying? Why should one airline be allowed to claim a route that its planes, pilots and flight attendants never fly? Why should the government be complicit in this misinformation?

It’s time for a bit of honesty from our airlines and transparent rules from our government.

Originally published in Tripso, April 7, 2009