Yesterday, two codeshare agreements (that I know of ) were publicly announced yesterday. Delta and Australia’s Virgin Blue announced a codeshare that will allow the two carriers to compete better in the Australia, U.S., and South Pacific regions. American Airlines and Brazil’s GOL announced a codeshare that will help enhance the route map for American’s passengers when traveling in South America, and GOL passengers will have access to one of the largest networks in the world. Both codeshare agreements certainly will boost the network of destinations for each carrier, but what is really behind a codeshare agreements anyways?
From Wikipedia, “A codeshare is an interline partnership where one carrier markets the air-service and places its designator code on another carrier’s flights. This arrangement allows carriers an opportunity to provide flights to destinations not in their basic route structure.” From what I’ve read and learned, codeshare agreements first came about in the 1970s, when Air Malta started to share capacity with Alitalia (can you believe Alitalia was innovative at one point?). The codeshare agreements of the 70s, 80s, and up to the early 90’s served as unique partnerships.
Once airline alliances started to form, carriers were offered a vast network of cooperative services right from initiation (no, airline alliances weren’t as big as they are now). Today, many carriers have codeshare agreements outside of their alliances; like these new agreements. It’s especially important for smaller, less connected carriers, to participate in these airline-to-airline codeshare agreements. Potentially, it could offer them a chance of being added to an airline alliance network.
It’s good to see carriers expanding the opportunities for travel for passengers. One of the biggest new stories in the aviation world is the mass amount of airlines seeking anti-trust immunity from Washington. Ten carriers feel as though Washington’s opposition to anti-trust immunity was “based on shortsighted analysis that ignored conditions in the airline industry.” You can read more about that here.
