continental operated by delta

SkyJeff

New Member
My mother took a flight booked on Continental, but "operated by Delta". What does this mean? Do they have some sort of agreement?
 
They codeshare. Continental often has flights operated by ExpressJet (they still consider us Continental on the tickets, but not anywhere else
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), Northwest, Delta, Copa, KLM, among others. It's the "SkyTeam Alliance".
 
I hate codeshares. There, I had to say it as a former CSA for XJT. The few passengers that still have brand loyalty to one airline or another generally get shafted on this. I wish I had $1 for everytime a passenger came up to our ticket counter to check in, and when we told them they were flying NWA, they would get bent out of shape b/c of their LAST experience on NWA. It normally ended with the words "I'll never fly NWA again." If I had those $1, Sallie Mae wouldn't own my soul.....
 
The purpose is to "increase" the route network. Once you codeshare with someone, the flights you can sell increase exponentially. Lets say you want to fly from ATL-EWR, but Delta only has like two flights (not sure what the actual number is, but just roll with me here). Through the codeshare with CAL, that number of flights increases by a bunch. Let's say CAL has like five from ATL-EWR. Now, Delta has seven flights it can sell tickets on. Different codeshare deals work different ways, though. Some limite the number of seats an airline can sell on another carrier, some are totally open. I THINK the SkyTeam one is totally open. I've seen almost entire XJT flights full of NWA ticketed passengers.

From an operational standpoint, codeshares easy the process for mx cancellations and wx delays. You have a lot more options to get your passengers from point A to point B. Same with oversells. We used to overbook the MEM-IAH flight all the time, or (like THIS ever happens) wx delays coming from EWR would back the flight up to the point where people would miss their international connections. The codeshare allowed us to tab into NWA's system, book the passengers on a NWA MEM-IAH flight, print out their new ticket and send them on their merry (well, not so merry) way.
 
[/Kinda-sorta thread hijack]

How does an airline figure out who will fly the routes. What I mean is, at Buffalo all of Deltas flights have been handled by Comair. However, lately I have seen mainline Delta taking off and I haven't seen that for YEARS. Any info??

[/End kind-sorta thread hijack]
 
Money. In the case of Delta/Comair/ASA, it's can they make more money with an RJ or an MD-88. For the SkyTeam Alliance, it's up to the individual airlines. If an airline decides to start service to, say Colorado Springs, then they have to foot the bill, plan the routes, etc. The other airlines just get the bonus of selling tickets through their own channels. It's a good way for a struggling airline to latch on to a successful one (<cough> ATA/SWA)
 
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