The new three-way codeshare agreement between American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia is being touted as a “benefit to consumers” that will offer “easy, seamless and convenient travel to more global destinations.”
Yeah, right.
The airlines hope to co-operate commercially on flights between the United States, Mexico, Canada, the European Union, Switzerland and Norway, continue to operate as separate legal entities, and expand their codeshare agreements on flights within and beyond the EU and US, they say.
But just how seamless are codeshare flights?
Here’s an existing example. If you fly from Austin, Texas to Madrid, you can book a ticket on all British Airways flights. But in reality, you fly on American Airlines from Austin to Dallas, change terminals in Dallas to a true British Airways flight, then change terminals again in London to an Iberia flight.
Sure, it’s a single fare, but you, and your luggage, have to make those transitions. And from years in the travel business, I can tell you that should something go wrong, airline finger-pointing supersedes alliance hype almost every time.
Plus, while having a ticket with alliance carriers helps, it’s just not the same as having a connection on the same carrier.
Let me give you two recent examples. A client of mine was on a Lufthansa-United joint business class electronic ticket to Athens, with a connection in Frankfurt. On the way out, the only problem was Lufthansa not crediting his mileage on the connecting flight. But on the way back, a United agent in Frankfurt demanded his paper ticket.
Because he was a United VIP, a supervisor finally let him on the plane at the last minute. Otherwise he would have missed it. And there was nothing wrong with the ticket. In fact, when he made it home, his return ticket showed both valid, and unused.
Another client had a worse result earlier this year with Air France and Northwest/KLM, both SkyTeam members. She was booked to fly Kiev-Amsterdam-San Francisco. The day before her flight, KLM canceled its flight out of Kiev, and sent us a message, which I forwarded to her, that she was rebooked on Air France via Paris, and that Air France would accept the electronic ticket.
They didn’t.
The KLM agent had no record of the new flight, and Air France, though they showed a reservation, rudely asked why she had shown up without a ticket, and sent her home. She contacted our office later to see if we could at least get a refund, although after a few hours on the phone Northwest/KLM did agree to let her fly the next day. (And eventually sent her a $100.00 apology certificate, albeit valid online only.)
Improved technology should improve the e-ticket situation overall, and these alliances may indeed get smoother with time. But given a choice between a single airline connection, and a code-share connection, well, there’s still no real choice.
And all the joint business agreements in the world probably won’t change that.
